Impressive Hartlepool United leave York City boss scathing in assessment

Ardley was appointed as York’s new manager in September following an alarming start to the season under Michael Morton.

Ardley’s appointment was met with widespread approval but the Minstermen continue to struggle at the wrong end of the table following Hartlepool’s emphatic 3-1 victory at the LNER Community Stadium.

For Pools, it was the perfect tonic to what has been a difficult period for themselves in the National League as goals from Jake Hastie, Tom Crawford and Nicky Featherstone capped an impressive afternoon for Askey's men.

Ardley, however, was left deeply frustrated by his team, labelling the performance as both ‘terrible’ and ‘embarrassing’ with Pools dominating for the majority of the 90 minutes.

"It’s not just a disappointing result, it’s a terrible performance. Let’s not beat around the bush,” said Ardley.

"There were 6,200 here, a local team coming down, and we were miles off it. Embarrassing. I can only apologise to the fans.

"The intensity we work at is nowhere near where it should be. If you have a go and put everything into it, we’ll get behind that and results will come and go how they do.

"But we’re not talking about a lack of quality or decision-making, we’re just talking about being second best, all over the pitch. At both ends they were running the show.

"It’s not about things not going our way, we didn’t perform. The opposition were miles better than us in every way. They won every battle, they ran harder, pressed harder, ran off the back of us, ran in behind, threatened us. We gave them a lot of that, we made it easy for them. I’d like to say its a bad day at the office, my worry is there’s something underlying that needs to be addressed.

"We were terrible in the first half. We tried to play with a high energy in the second half – I thought we started for a few minutes really well, that next goal was always going to be crucial and they broke and it was game over. 3-0 and 2-1 are different games. I’m embarrassed.”