Darlington's Mr Versatile, Ian Clark, admits a crisis of confidence has hit the squad and players are beginning to wonder when they will win next.

Quakers have not won since Tuesday, February 5 when they were 3-1 victors at Carlisle, but since then nine games have come and gone without Darlington winning.

Saturday's defeat at York was the Quakers' sixth defeat of the miserable run and coupled with the recent off-the-field ongoings, morale could be better.

York opened the scoring ten minutes into the second half and within 12 minutes they had scored again, and Clark said: "When the first goal went in you could see our heads went down.

"Confidence is a major part of the game and at the moment you can see we haven't got loads of it.

"You start to think where the next goal and the next win is going to come from.

"We should be beating teams like York.

"Teams that want to get promotion should all be beating them.

"In the first Peterborough game we out-played them and we were winning 2-0 but as soon as they got a goal back you could see the confidence wasn't there."

As well as twice reaching the play-offs with Hartlepool, Clark also endured being near the bottom of the heap with the Victoria Park club so knows all about hard times, and says in those situations luck becomes vital.

"I've been second bottom of the League with Hartlepool so I know what it's like when nothing is going your way," explained Clark.

"You just need a flukey goal or a goal scored from a bit of magic from nowhere.

"If we could score first I think you'd see a far better team because it would give us the confidence to play. In the last few games we haven't scored first once, in our last win at Carlisle we scored first."

Northampton striker Marco Gabbiadini was yesterday fined £500 plus costs after being found guilty of improper conduct by an FA disciplinary panel following Town's Second Division encounter with Brentford on January 22.

Kidderminster manager Jan Molby was also found guilty of improper conduct.

The former Liverpool midfielder was fined £500 following an incident during Harriers' LDV Vans Trophy Northern Section first round match against Doncaster on October 16.

Reading are set to complete the loan signing of striker Michael Branch from Wolves.

Royals manager Alan Pardew is looking to strengthen his squad and wants to test centre-forward Branch's credentials in the Nationwide League Division Two promotion run-in.

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