Ebbsfleet United are lodging a formal complaint regarding the referee and match assessor following the farcical series of events which preceded Saturday's game against Bishop's Stortford.

Fleet had to make a late change to their line-up when left-back Joe Howe suffered a calf injury during the warm-up. Aiden Palmer, who wasn't named on the original team sheet, was called up at the last minute but ended up sitting on the bench when the visitors complained about his inclusion.

Supporters were left waiting as the clock ticked past 3pm with no sign of the teams and when they did emerge, Anthony Acheampong was in the Fleet XI.

Ebbsfleet boss Daryl McMahon switched from a back-four to a 3-5-2 formation and the home side ended up winning 4-2.

But the club are not happy and vice-chairman Peter Varney confirmed there would be a formal complaint.

He said: "At 2.30pm our left-back Joe Howe was injured in the warm-up. We replaced him with Aiden Palmer - who was not in the original named 16 - as we are perfectly entitled to do under league rules.

"Bishop's Stortford protested at the change and neither the match official nor the match assessor were confident enough to confirm our action was in accordance with league rules and decided to seek clarification from the Football Association. This caused a delay to the kick-off.

"Worse than that, though, is that Daryl McMahon was left in a ridiculous situation where he had legitimately named a replacement player for Joe but didn't know whether he would be forced to make another change and so named Anthony Acheampong as a second replacement player and changed the team shape which is far from ideal.

"This is not an acceptable situation immediately before kick-off and is very disruptive to team organisation.

"Daryl should not have to do this because match officials and assessors do not know the rules and players getting injured in a warm up is hardly an unusual occurence after all.

"In my opinion, match officials need proper coaching on rules like this that they are almost certain to come across from time to time".

Acheampong ended up coming off at half-time as McMahon sent on Palmer and reverted to the Fleet's regular shape.

He said: "Joe obviously got injured in the warm-up so were we going to bring Aiden into the squad to start at left-back, to keep the same shape.

"But we were told that we weren't allowed to bring a player from outside the 16 into the starting XI. I think we were allowed to do it but by then I had the hump and I just thought we'd stick Ach in.

"I didn't want to wait any more. Acheampong is a terrific player and I was confident putting him in. I wasn't worried about putting him in the team.

"We'd been working on this formation anyway in training, on Thursday, so it wasn't completely out of the blue.

"After the first five or 10 minutes, when we settled down, I thought we absolutely dominated the game. It was some of the best football we've played this season and in the new shape, I thought we were outstanding.

"I thought Acheampong did really well first half but I just thought we'd change it to a back-four (at half-time).

"Clarky and Ach were both on yellow cards and I thought they would try to go down the sides of us in the second half.

"I thought most of (Stortford boss Rod Stringer's) team talk at half-time would have been about exposing those two, being booked, and I thought if we put two full-backs in it might kill their game plan a little bit.

"Not many teams could do what we did today, changing the formation at two minutes past three.

"The football intelligence in the group is very good. They can slot into different things and understand what they're doing very quickly. It was pleasing to see."