YORK City manager Neal Ardley was happy with the 'nitty gritty' performed by his side in the Minstermen's 2-1 victory over Woking on Saturday afternoon. 

A 98th minute strike by Ryan Fallowfield handed York a crucial victory over Woking in front of the TNT Sport cameras, after Lenell John-Lewis' earlier equaliser was cancelled out by Ricky Korboa. 

Ardley confirmed that Korboa's equaliser had been offside, but was happy by his side's defensive effors against a prolific Woking outfit, and explained the decision to bring on Aiden Marsh instead of settling for a point.

“It’s a tough place to come, I thought we were a little bit soft on Tuesday and played some lovely football but we didn’t do the nitty gritty." Ardley told BBC Radio York.

“Woking are the sort of team that put it on you. They pressure, they are in your face and I had an hour yesterday to try and get the lads ready for a different kind of challenge and to get them to rise to it.

“I thought they did, they did the nitty gritty of football and sometimes you have to do that, particularly away from home.

“I always say to the lads to not be afraid to lose to the game. That was my saying from the start, don’t be scared to lose it.

“That means to go for three points, when I made the sub late on with Maz, let’s bring Marshy on and see if we can produce a little bit of magic, he’s a goalscorer and we had three forwards on the pitch at that point.

“It nearly backfired because they were going forward and we were going forward and it became a bit of a tennis match, which wasn’t quite what I wanted.

“But the boys dug in, defended the box well and we had a great chance.

“We’ve got that ability, we just need to make sure we don’t concede.

“Looking back at it now on BT, their goal was offside. I can smile about it now because we’ve won, but if it had been 1-1 I would have been really disappointed.

“Anyone who wants to call me a defensive manager can look at that, but for Thierry (Latty-Fairweather) to be at one byline and for Fallows (Ryan Fallowfield) to be tapping the ball home from the other, that tells you I’m not a defensive manager."

Ardley also explained the decision to only have four substitutes amongst his travelling bench, with the City camp being struck by illness in the last week.

“That’s on me, I don’t like taking 20 man squads because I don’t think it’s right financially to take that many people.

“To also have senior pros travelling and not getting game time, we had that 17 man squad on Friday and it was announced on Thursday afternoon, we trained Friday and everyone knew who was travelling.

“On Friday Quevin Castro landed on his ribs and had to go to the hospital, he was struggling to breathe and was in a lot of pain.

“We were okay with 16, but have had a lot of sickness and diahorrea in the camp, Callum Howe missed out on that last week, Olly Dyson and the kitman didn’t travel. Coxy and Macca was the kitmen today!

“Last night, Kai Kennedy went down with it. That’s on me, maybe I should take three or four more and spend the money, it’s not the way I like to do things but I’ve ended up with four subs because of it."