Chesterfield 'best team in National League,' says Solihull Moors boss Neal Ardley

Captain Storer was sent off after 23 minutes for a lunge on Luke Croll and the Spireites took full advantage with two goals before half-time from Alex Whittle and Kabongo Tshimanga.

“We lost the game in the 15-minute spell from the sending off though to half-time,” Ardley said.

"When you have a man sent off you compose yourself, you make it very difficult for the opposition, you give yourself a chance to get in at half-time and maybe give yourself a chance in the second-half.

"You are playing top of the league, the best team at the moment without a doubt, and their goals did not come from us being down to 10-men, their goals came from overloads and from poor defending. That is the game more or less over there.”

Town made sure they did not make any errors after the break to let the hosts back into the game and had opportunities to go further ahead.

"In the second-half, if we had got it all wrong, it could have ended up four or five and that would not have done anyone any good,” Ardley said. “We tried to stay in the game and do the best we could. We still kept two centre-forwards to try and nick a goal.

"But the second-half was just non-existent, they just professionally saw the game out and we did not have enough.

"We had two or three chances at one-nil down to equalise before half-time but when you go to 10-men you need to compose yourself and the defending was not good enough.

"We have only got ourselves to blame.”

Storer was sent off by referee Garreth Rhodes and Ardley could see why he made that decision.

He added: "I have not seen it back and my initial reaction was that it could have been off. As soon as I saw it I thought ‘he could be off for that.’ It did look like his follow-through was quite high.”