Woking manager Neal Ardley admitted his side were below their usual levels after they fell to a 2-1 defeat at ten-man Sutton United.

“Surprisingly for us we really poor without the ball for the first 25 minutes,” said Ardley.

“I thought Sutton attacked with pace – they ran off the back of us too many times, particularly through the midfield.

“We conceded two goals and probably could have conceded another one.

“That's unlike us because the bedrock of our performances normally are that we're very hard to play against in open play.

“We get ourselves back in the game but then find ourselves 2-1 down.

“Sutton had the man sent off and at that point we had enough time to go at them.

“I thought at the back end of the first half we had the pressure without having the moment.

“We started the second half really well. We tweaked a couple of things to get more bodies in the box and more people forward.

“Caleb Richards had a great chance to score but after that I thought we started forcing things.

“We started making strange decisions and panicking a bit.

“Sutton could then counter-attack on us and that made us a little bit nervous in the way we played.

“After that we started to play with a bit of anxiety and as it went on we got worse.

“Credit to Sutton, with the ten men they did a great job, but we didn't ask enough questions in the second half with our quality.

“We lacked calmness as the game wore – we got worse in that respect.

“We didn't move the ball quickly enough and we didn't play with enough belief or quality to keep the pressure on.

“The effort was there but we got worse as the game went on.”