Since the beginning of pre-season in the 2024/25 season, York have gone on to smash previous records both on-and-off-of-the-field, which includes attendances, points tallies and individual accolades for some of the first-team squad.
It was largely aided by an incredible season on-the-pitch for City, after Adam Hinshelwood steered the Minstermen to a second-placed finish in the Enterprise National League, with the second-highest points tally achieved in the club’s history.
Whilst it wasn’t the fairy-tale ending that Uggla wanted after York crashed out of the play-offs at the semi-final stage, he has been overjoyed with the progress that City have showcased across 12 months – especially considering the club only avoided a drop into regional football at the end of the 2023/24 season.
In a sit-down podcast with York Hospital Ball, which can be found in full HERE, Uggla enthused: “I think that if you had offered me that at this time last year, I probably would have bit your hand off for it.
“It’s massive progress, we broke all sorts of records both on and off the pitch, so it was a really, really good year.
“The ending was a little bit of a heartbreak, but we can learn from these things and move forward.”
City’s play-off heartbreak was something that could cause quite the hangover for the York hierarchy, but the club have moved quickly to recruit eight new faces in the off-season to help establish their promotion credentials for the approaching 2025/26 campaign.
Uggla would go on to explain how the 3-0 hammering against Oldham Athletic affected the football club’s approach to the new season, in particular recruitment, with City working hard to improve in the areas that data has highlighted as a potential weakness.
“I was kind of sceptical going into it [the play-offs] because I thought it was a bad match up for us,” Uggla added.
“Obviously as the table showed, we were a far better footballing team than Oldham over the course of the season, but that type of situation, I did worry.
“If you look back over the season, whenever we had a big game which meant a lot, the result didn’t go our way.
“Forest Green away, Barnet away, then obviously Oldham in the play-offs.
“I had thought beforehand that it might be an interesting one, and I probably took a day or two to feel kind of sorry for myself.
“Then it’s kind of right, where did we go wrong, and what do we need to address, and how can we improve.
“I went away and spoke with an analyst that we use and a data company, and it was quite glaring that our weaknesses were probably height, athleticism, experience and I think we were probably missing a leader or two on the night.
“Whereas if you look at the Oldham team, it was full of those types of players.
“We very quickly addressed it and went and got Ollie Banks in the building, I think within a week of that game, he was in the building for the game.
“We’ve then added Ash Palmer who has been unbelievable in this division and has got out of it multiple times, and [Mark] Kitching who got out of it with Oldham.
“Hiram Boateng, I don’t think he’s ever played in this division, but he’s had promotions in the league above, and he adds that height and physicality as well.
“We conceded a lot of goals from set-pieces last year, but if you look at the personnel who just got mentioned, you’d like to think that we’d win those duels more often than not.”
Following on from the play-off defeat, York made national headlines after releasing a letter directed towards the National League and Trevor Birch, the Chief Executive Officer of the Football League.
The letter was to alarm the two recipients of the need for the 3UP system, which would see the National League gain an additional promotion spot, whilst Sky Bet League Two would welcome a third relegation position.
Uggla admitted to feeling concerned about the timing of the letter, but remained keen that 3UP was still needed, albeit he was aware that it was unlikely to come into fruition anytime soon.
He explained: “We put out a letter after the season had ended, and personally I said that I wasn’t putting my name on that.
“I don’t think it was the right time, but they put it out anyways and that obviously caused a stir.
“I do agree with the 3UP, I think that the National League is very much the same standard of League Two, I don’t think there’s a big drop off.
“You can see the promoted teams that go up, they always do really well and I can’t remember one since I’ve been watching that has gone up and has come straight back down.
“In fact, it’s usually the other way, where they go up and continue to climb.
“It is what it is and it’s what we’ll continue to deal with, you can keep banging the drum and hope for some change, but whether that happens, there has been talks about it for a long time.
“Whether someone steps in and makes that decision for clubs, I don’t think clubs are going to vote for it.”
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