YORK City manager Neal Ardley described Chester as a ‘dangerous animal’ ahead of Saturday’s Emirates FA Cup first round clash at the Deva Stadium.

Chester currently find themselves on a five-match winning streak after finding form in the Vanarama National League North, and sit just one position adrift of the play-offs due to goal difference.

Ardley is wary of the threat Chester possess, and heaped praise onto Seals’ manager Calum McIntyre after following a similar route to Ardley into senior management.

“They’re really good, they started the season and from their point of view didn’t get the results they wanted,” Ardley explained.

“Their performances were quite good, and they’ve now won five on the bounce, tweaked their shape slightly and found something that’s started to work for them.

“Confidence has built from that, all of a sudden you’ve got a team who are very confident, haven’t conceded a lot of goals and started to create more chances, tweaked their shape and it’s started to work for them and they’ve got a lot of belief in it.

“They’re a dangerous animal.

“If we were in the place that I wanted us to be in at the top of the league and pushing for promotion, you could go into this thinking that you’re a league above them and at the top.

“But we’re not, we’re a team that you look at and think the game will be very even, even though we’re a league above.

“They’re in great form and some people might even make them favourites, given that they are at home.

“He’s (McIntyre) doing brilliant, when I first took my job senior I had run Cardiff’s academy for six years.

“I was like a rabbit in the headlights, there’s so many things to think about that are slightly different from youth football and academy football.

“Maybe that was at the start of the season where they were finding their feet, but they’ve found a way to get his ideas across now and it’s really clicking.

“The players are responding, so that’s brilliant for him and brilliant for them, but it’s not so good for Saturday when it comes to us and they’re in good form.”

Ardley also called for his players to be more creative moving forward, ahead of a match with a Chester side who have kept four clean sheets in a row.

“You’re always concerned about where the goals are going to come from, when I first came in we were averaging two goals a game, it was the other end that was the problem.

“Now we’re trying to get the other end a bit stronger and we’ve lost key players at the other end.

“My job in training is to come up with ways to put pressure on the other players to score goals, not just Dipo or Lenny, you’re trying to put the pressure on Kai Kennedy, Castro, one of the midfielders or the wing-backs if we’re playing that way.

“It’s about getting them into those positions to create goals, we try do it so the team knows whose in there, getting the right bodies into the right areas so they know best.

“We’ve got to do a lot of things better, if I go back to the first half at Chesterfield and the performance without the ball at Halifax, then there were positives there in that we weren’t an easy team to play against.

“I think that being with the ball at the moment is our biggest issue, the quality in the decision making hasn’t been good enough.

“I don’t think we’ve really put in a 90 minutes with and without the ball, and we need to start putting together more complete performances in all aspects.

“I can’t say there’s one thing we need to work on, whether it’s fitness and trying to create robust players, which we’re trying to put in place.

“We’ve got new staff joining next week which can hopefully kick us on again, there’s loads to do.”