BRADFORD Park Avenue make their first visit to FC United of Manchester’s purpose-built Broadhurst Park on Saturday, just one week after the reverse fixture in Vanarama National League North was washed out.

Both clubs played on Bank Holiday Monday, with Avenue suffering their first league defeat since October, while Karl Marginson’s side took a point from a 1-1 draw with Hednesford Town.

Avenue were beaten 1-0 at promotion-chasing North Ferriby United, and manager Martin Drury was unhappy with the performance, but believes that lessons can be learned.

He said: “We let ourselves down at Ferriby.

“We looked tired both physically and mentally, for whatever reason. We allowed them to drag us into a scrappy game and didn’t use our brains to maintain our usual style of play that has got us the positive results of late.

“When you do that against North Ferriby, you give them a chance to dominate, and for a spell in the second half they did and scored a poor goal from our perspective.

"Our standards have been very high, which is why we’ve been on such a great run of form, so we won’t be coming down on our players too much but we did fall short collectively and it cost us the game, and the players know that.

“I thought it was a poor game overall, with both teams underperforming and one that would be decided by a scrappy goal.

"Unfortunately for us Ferriby scored it. However, the manner of our performance just wasn’t what it should have been.

“It’s now important that we regroup and analyse the simple things we got wrong on Monday to make sure we perform to our usual standards tomorrow and play our way, and not the way our opponents want us to.”

Avenue slipped down one place in the table but the narrow defeat wasn’t too damaging as they could still climb into the top half with a win.

Despite banking a point on Monday, FC United are only one point and one place above the drop zone.