NEAL ARDLEY felt that his York City players were simply beaten by the better team this evening, after a 4-2 defeat to Barnet at the LNER Community Stadium.

An impressive display from the visitors saw Barnet claim three goals in the second half to claim a comfortable scoreline, despite a brace from York star Dipo Akinyemi.

Ardley was disappointed with the reaction of his players to falling behind on 65 minutes, and admitted it was a lesson learnt for his City squad.

“It was a tough game, I’m not going to lie that was probably the best team I’ve seen in our league this season.” Ardley confessed.

“I don’t know where to start with it, we had a game plan and we knew they were going to be a 3-4-3 and very brave, with almost five up at times and dominate the ball.

“First half we got some of the stuff we worked on wrong, and we ended up syncing back in.

“I found that even though we got into some great place going forward, they got into our final third and we had to defend for our lives.

“We tried to change it in the second half so we could press a bit higher, get in their faces a bit higher and try to disrupt them from being able to play and hopefully get our abilities going forward.

“We never quite worked, I think that this season when teams have conceded, we’ve been very good at getting our lads to go again, and honestly it was a bit of a mistake for the goal.

“We’ve turned the ball over, and within three or four second he’s shot through someone’s legs and it’s a goal.

“From that moment on, our body language went down. I don’t know if it was because they had run the legs off of us or not, but at that point our body language was gone and that third goal was poor.

“At that point we kind of sunk into our shells a little bit, it’s always hard when teams are in the top three and go one up. If we had stayed at 2-1, reset ourselves and stayed in the game, you never know.

“They are an athletic, powerfully technical team, and they were better than us in all areas.

"I’m not going to batter the boys, I’m not going to say anything other than we got beat by a better team today.

“It was a bit of a lesson, our heads dropped at 2-1 and that caused the scoreline to end up the way it did.”

Ardley was pleased with the individual performances of Akinyemi and debutant Will Smith, who only joined the club on Monday on a one-month loan deal from neighbours Harrogate Town.

The City boss also confirmed that Lenell John-Lewis’ absence from the squad wasn’t due to fitness, but rather due to a personal issue for the York captain.

“Dipo is a good player, we know he’s a good player but I’m more worried about the team.

“I’m not going to worry about whether Dipo has goals and is scoring, I’m more worried about if the team is picking up points and today we got a bit of a lesson.

“There’s no excuses, the boys are struggling a bit in there.

“We had three players before the game with diahorrea, it’s gone through the camp, and there’s another three in there with stomach cramps.

“Unfortunately once you name a squad, they’ve got to go out and play, but there’s no excuse.

“Lenny (Lenell John-Lewis) had a personal family thing.

“Family has to come first, I talked to Lenny and he had to be with his family today.

“I thought Will was really good. Last season he played at Scunthorpe and came back from a long-term injury, and it showed a little bit but I thought he looked really sharp and fit today.

“It was unlucky for him to be playing in his first game against such a good team, but we have another good team coming here on Saturday who are unbeaten, and they’re coming thick and fast.”