BOSS Mark Yates said Harriers failed to get the balance right as they slipped to defeat against York City at Aggborough.

Brilliant long range strikes from Kallum Griffiths and Scott Burgess handed the visitors a 2-1 success despite Joe Ironside’s second-half equaliser.

Yates said: “We got beat by two worldie goals but, that said, it wasn’t the standard we set ourselves last week.

“We dropped our standards and Russ (Penn) and Jimmy (O’Connor) were just saying that we slipped back into where we were a few weeks ago.

“I’m not making excuses, we didn’t start with the energy and tempo that we started with last week and I think that’s the thing that has cost us.

“It just shows what an influence Declan (Weeks) is on games. We missed his steadying influence on the ball and his passing ability. That said, we’ve got players in the squad to cope.

“It’s disappointing today. I’m not going to hammer the players, we just didn’t do what we intended to do.

“I can’t criticise their effort but when we needed to slow the game down and show a little bit of quality we played at 100 miles an hour.

“We were playing opposites today. When we needed to hurry things up, we slowed them down and had another pass, so it wasn’t what we wanted.

“We’ll get back in on Monday and address it. Last week was maybe just a good start and we just didn’t get those standards today.

“We didn’t ask enough questions of them and that’s the disappointing thing for me.”

Meanwhile, the boss did reveal that the camp has been hit by a sickness bug in recent days. It was illness that forced Ash Chambers off early in the first half and also prevented Billy Daniels getting the time on the training pitch he’d have wanted ahead of replacing the injured Declan Weeks in the starting line-up.

Yates added: “There is a bit of a sickness bug going around. Ed Williams hasn’t been in all week. Chambo (Ash Chambers) tells me after five minutes that he’s feeling sick and it’s one of those things you have to deal with.

Harriers now head to Blyth Spartans next week looking to get back on track.

The manager said: “We’ll prepare properly, do things right and make sure we’re better than today. We will be, I have no doubt. “