NEAL ARDLEY doesn’t believe that York City deserved to lose 2-1 to Hartlepool United this afternoon.

A brace from Mani Dieseruvwe put Hartlepool in control before Dipo Akinyemi was able to halve the deficit with a consolation strike in stoppage time, with both sides playing out a relatively even contest at the Suit Direct Stadium.

Ardley admitted his frustrations at falling to the defeat with the City boss feeling as if his side lacked quality in the final third, despite York throwing the ‘kitchen sink’ at Hartlepool in the later stages.

“It’s disappointing because we didn’t deserve to lose the game, I don’t think either team deserved to win the game,” Ardley admitted.

“It’s one of those games, I’ve come off and said how have we lost that?

“Their first goal is their first real attempt on target and their second goal is a penalty, all of a sudden you are 2-0 down and practically out of the game.

“I threw everything I could at it, kitchen sink, but in the end we didn’t have enough quality up front to win the game.

“You’re Woking’s have won, Dorking have won, look at us now, we’re three points off of the bottom four.

“We’ve got to keep chipping, tonight is disappointing because of the fans and how many come, how brilliant they have been and we wanted to put right what happened nine games ago with Hartlepool.”

Ardley also explained the decision to switch to a four at the back formation, with the York manager keen to have two strikers leading the line in tricky pitch conditions.

“I didn’t think that there was anything in the game, you can see the conditions of the pitch and we tried to pick a team that we thought could excel on that pitch.

“We played the two big strong boys up top and hoped that Billy could feed off of the stuff coming off of the sides.

“They’ve scored with their first attempt on target I think, and up until then I thought that we were the team on the ascendancy and the better team.”