AFC manager Paul Cox again refused to get carried away as his Barrow side made it seven games unbeaten with a 2-0 win over York.

A Danny Livesey header and a Matt Fry own goal, both after the break, pushed the Bluebirds up to third in the National League, still three points off the top.

With a game against second-placed Forest Green Rovers to come in their next match, there is the chance for Barrow to climb further still, but Cox is keeping his feet on the ground.

The experienced boss knows there is a long way to go in the season, with only 12 matches gone, and that the display in beating the Minstermen was strong after the break, but disjointed before it, leaving room for progress among a side with potential.

“It’s looking okay – there are a lot of smiles, there is a positivity around the football club,” he said. “I’ve always said, I never get too low when we get beat and, today, I won’t get too high.

“I think everything is positive at the minute, and while it is, you have to embrace it, you have to enjoy it, and we’ve got to make sure that we keep that bad patch as far away as possible.”

He added: “I thought today that we saw a York side at their max, but we saw a Barrow side at only 60 or 65 per cent of what we can do. In the first half, I thought we were off the pace, we didn’t play with any intensity or tempo, but that was playing into a very strong wind, against a very determined York side.

“The second half, I thought we got into our mode again, played with the intensity I expect us to and, in the end, we could have scored more than the two goals.

“There are a lot of factors that meant we weren’t at the same intensity as against Lincoln. I’m still learning about the group, how to manage them through the week, the intensity of training, the rest periods we are getting. All these things, I’m still learning about the group, and the group are learning about themselves.

“The state of mind I keep talking about is important. We need to keep a lot of these players’ feet on the ground. Some of these players will not have been in this situation before, in terms of winning football matches. It’s a learning curve for all of us.

“The more we understand each other, the better we will become and the more consistently at 95 per cent we will be.

“We going to go through a bad patch at some point, and I think it’s how we manage that as a football club which will ultimately decide where we are. We want to keep that patch as far away as possible – I’m hoping around April time, or later!”

One factor that impressed Cox was his side’s ability to work well as a unit when there were times during the game when not everything clicked.

He hailed players for stepping up to the mark and carrying more than their weight – with Livesey, Moussa Diarra and Jordan Williams all impressing – and said: “As a unit, there were some really impressive individual performances. There were one or two who were a little bit off the pace today, but then one or two went above and beyond what they were expected to do to really galvanise the unit.

“That’s what we’re turning into at the minute, we’re turning into a good, organised unit. That’s what it pleasing me most, because it is always the best team that wins football matches, not the best group of individuals.”