CINDERFORD Town assistant manager Andrew Smith admitted the Foresters weren’t up to their usual standards in their possession play during their 5-3 FA Cup win against Bideford on Saturday.

But Smith praised the change of system that he and manager Paul Michael believed would yield more scoring chances and bore fruit against their Southern League Division One South rivals.

“I’ll be honest, it was a strange old game. We weren’t at our best in terms of how we kept the ball,” Smith told the club’s official channels.

“We changed it up a little with a different shape that what we have been doing in an attempt to get more people further up the pitch so we can try and create more attacking opportunities.

“We’ve played really good football this year I think but when me and the gaffer have analysed the game we haven’t really created the amount of chances we wanted to for the amount of ball we’ve had.

“So we mixed it up today and tried something different. We weren’t at our best but it’s cup football and we’ve got there somehow.

“Me and Paul have been speaking and when you keep the ball like we have been sides tend to sit back, there’s not much space in behind and it’s difficult to break teams down."