John Coleman is relishing the busy festive period, starting with tomorrow’s trip to York City.

The game at Bootham Crescent is the first of four in a fortnight for the Reds and the manager is looking forward to one of his favourite times of year.

“I love football so when it gets condensed into a short space of time you can experience that thrill a bit quicker,” he said. “It’s like a chocoholic getting a selection box!”

“It’s what I’ve always known. I’ll tell you on the 30^th whether we’ve had a good Christmas or not. If you can get six points from two games over this Christmas period it doesn’t half give you a lift because it will propel you up the table.

“We’ve said since the day that we came back that we want to be challenging when the New Year starts and in order to do that we’ll have to win at least one of these two games.

“We’ve got a good team, a good set of lads who want to work hard and they are slowly getting the belief that they should be higher up the table than they were. I think we’ve picked up over 20 points since we came back and if we can keep going with that kind of form then we should be in the play-offs.

“So far a bank of wins hasn’t been taking you very far but as the season wears on a stretch of three or four wins will get you somewhere. Everyone can’t keep winning. A little run at this time of the season will propel anyone up the table. It’ll take teams from the bottom to mid-table and mid-table teams into contention. At some point we need to find our bank of three or four wins.”

York have struggled to recapture the form that saw them make the play-offs last season but Coleman is taking nothing for granted.

“Sometimes it can be difficult once you’ve made the play-offs, especially if you lose a few players,” he explained. “We had it the year we got there to an extent but luckily got it right and got back up on the verge of the play-offs. It can be difficult but if you’ve got players who have experienced it then they’ll want to experience it again and I’m sure that’s the case with York.

“I’m expecting it to be a very tough game. We’re at the stage now where teams will start to look at us and not relish playing us. We have to have that between now and the end of the season because it will mean we’re doing well.

“I read that York haven’t won a home league game this season and that Friday could equal a club record for them. In the past we’ve always seemed to help break ducks for people, teams or centre forwards breaking goal droughts. I don’t want us to be the ones who stop that run for them.”