NEAL ARDLEY felt his side lacked quality in the final third after being held to a 0-0 draw with Chester in the Emirates FA Cup first round. 

York and Chester were unable to find the breakthrough, meaning a replay will be played at the LNER Community Stadium on Tuesday, November 14 (7.45pm) with a spot in the second round awaiting the winner.

Ardley was generally pleased with the effort of his players and felt Chester had to be respected, but was disappointed with a lack of quality in the final third.

“To be honest with you, they’ve got a way of playing, they’ve won six on the bounce and we had to respect that," Ardley admitted.

"We’ve tried to come up with a way of dealing with what they’re good at and exploiting the system when we could have.

"I thought we were brilliant at switching the play in the first-half, we got into loads of good areas, got into their final third and into their box.

"Then the players need to deliver a bit more quality, I’ve just said to them in there that I can set them up to get into the final third and get the right bodies in the final third, but you’ve got to have the quality and the decision-making in there.

"That was the only thing missing was our finishing, we had a couple of chances with our play once we got in there.

"Defensively I thought our shape was good, until the end when they changed to a 3-5-2, we went a little bit raggedy.

"With the ball we seemed to run out of ideas because we didn’t have an overload, we started pumping it long and nobody was on the seconds, so we started counter-attacking.

"In the last five minutes we went a little bit raggedy again, they smelt some blood and we ended up doing some stupid things and giving away.

"It was always going to be a tricky away tie, I thought that the boys tactically were good, they just lacked that bit of quality, certainly in the final third.

“I didn’t want a replay, but if it’s between a replay or going out of the cup, then I’ll take a replay."

Ardley also explained the inclusion of both Dipo Akinyemi and Scott Burgess, and why neither were fit to start the match after being substituted onto the pitch shortly after the hour mark.

“Dipo only trained two days and we couldn’t risk him, we couldn’t throw him on from the start.

"We need to give him a good week and he’s had 30 minutes today, that was always the plan.

"Scott Burgess was ill on Thursday and had a bad migraine and was throwing up, so we made that decision.

"We did a lot of work on Thursday about how we were going to play and he wasn’t there, so we made that decision that he wouldn’t be available to start.

"A couple of things were forced onto us, I’m quite pleased with the effort, the work we did for two days, but I’m just disappointed with the final product."