Simon Ramsden is fed up with City’s Jeckyll and Hyde appearance.

The current campaign has been littered with bad days following good ones.

Peter Taylor’s short spell at the Valley Parade helm has seen three wins and three defeats.

The gloss from last weekend’s memorable Yorkshire derby success over Rotherham was knocked off by a dismal midweek loss at Port Vale.

Skipper Ramsden, who held his hand up for the first Vale goal, admits he is getting sick of this “one step forward, one step back” pattern of results.

“It just seems every time we feel that we’re getting somewhere, we get brought back down to earth with a bang,” he said.

“The performance wasn’t great at Port Vale but when we went in 1-0 up at half-time, we should have been able to grind it out.

“You can’t play well every game but if we’d kept it tight and got the three points, then everybody would have taken that.

“But it wasn’t to be and that’s a real sickener after the great result we’d got against Rotherham.

“Playing so many away games does take its toll. We’ve had a lot of Saturday and Tuesday matches and it’s been a pretty settled side in that time.

“But it’s been the same for virtually every other team in the league, so there’s no excuse for the other night.”

Tuesday’s defeat blew the chance for City to move above 16th for the first time in two months. Even a win at home to Aldershot on Saturday is unlikely to see that change.

Ramsden was disappointed that the high jinks of the Don Valley Stadium was followed with such a flat display.

“It’s hard to put your finger on it but we conceded two sloppy goals,” he said.

“The first one was my mistake. I slid in for the ball and got there first but he got a deflection and went past me.

“The second took a big deflection which gave Matty Glennon no chance.

“But there’s only one thing we can do now and that’s go into the next game with the right attitude and make sure we win for the fans. We’ve got to start from scratch again.

“Before Tuesday, people were saying that if we can put a run together we could still make the play-offs.

“But we need to get back to basics now with a strong performance. We’ve got to be hard to beat and hopefully put on a good show for everybody.

“I don’t know if the gaffer will freshen the team up but whoever plays, I’m sure they will be giving it everything.”

City also hope the state of the Valley Parade playing surface will have picked up after a fortnight’s inactivity.

Michael Flynn admitted: “Our pitch has been terrible at best lately. That’s through no fault of the groundstaff, it’s just with the weather we’ve had and the drainage not being as good as it should be.

“Hopefully giving it a break for a couple of weeks has eased things and dried it out.”