YORK City have ‘done their homework’ on Nantwich Town and won’t accept any complacency in the Isuzu FA Trophy tie.

Manager Neal Ardley insisted that his side would be ready to counter the threat of Nantwich, despite it being harder than usual to gain information on the side due to their lower league position.

Following relegation last season, Nantwich now play their football in the Northern Premier League west division, just one tier higher than the likes of Tadcaster Albion and Pickering Town.

Ardley admitted that he had faced difficulties in his pre-match game plan, but remains confident his player know what is required of them on Saturday afternoon.

“We’ve done our homework, we’ve scrolled and got lots of footage and got a lot of reports from people that have played against them at their level,” Ardley explained.

“We’ll be as ready as we can, every team is going to have their threats and every team is going to have their weaknesses, we’ve just got to make sure that the team going out on that pitch knows what they are doing, knows the game plan, executes it and gets a result.

“We’ve done whatever homework we can and got whatever footage we can, but the hard thing is that because they don’t have set squad numbers like us, when it comes to set pieces and change their numbers such as someone changing from number five last week to number three this week, we need to make sure we’re up to speed with that.

"We’ve done our homework as we always do and we will make sure the lads are ready for a game.

“It’s important at any point as a clean sheet will breed confidence as much as scoring goals.

“Byron Harrison I actually had at Wimbledon when I arrived, Byron is a good player on his day and can cause lots of problems.

“He’s six foot three, he can run, score goals and has done it at various levels.

“We need to make sure we have a plan so that he doesn’t cause us problems, and we need to make sure that we cause them problems.

“I always believe that clean sheets are a breed of good habits.”

Ardley also refused to use the difference of material on pitches as an excuse for any FA Trophy surprises on Saturday, with Nantwich’s Swansway Group Stadium holding a 3G surface.

The City boss doesn’t see why it should be an issue for his side, with his players majorly training on astro turf during the festive period, but remains wary that it can cause injuries to his players.

“They’ve got a new 3G so I am surprised if the manager isn’t happy with it,” Ardley admitted.

“To be fair the weather has been that bad in York, we’ve only trained once or twice in the last month on grass.

“We’ve been on 3G most of the time so the lads bodies have adapted to it, there’s no real issues with me picking a team that can’t handle 3G.

“You do get some players that struggle on it or get stiff on it, but if there was ever a player at risk then we would take that into consideration.

2But there’s one or two in our league that use them and we’ve been training on it, anyone who can’t train on 3G is barely going to train on it at the moment.”