“The days of beating the players up are over,” Ardley said.
“They are already feeling beaten up and you need to try to pick them up.
“They are used to not winning games of football. They would like to try to do something about the situation, but they don’t know how.
“One way is to work on the training ground, the other is to bring players in and give the place a lift and maybe a bit more belief will come.
“We have shown them videos, but it was not slaughtering or criticising them - just looking at things we can get better at.
“When you look at the (Cambridge) performance, defensively it was one of the best since I’ve been here and matched the intensity of the Bury game.
“In open play we limited them to hardly anything. We’ve won a lot of battles, but going forwards was one of the worst performances.
“We lacked penetration, we lacked ball quality and at the moment we need results rather than performances.”