Joey, I know there will be disappointment to lose to Wycombe, but positives to take from your performance this afternoon.
We’re disappointed. I was sitting in there at half time and I said ‘Settle down, we’ve got to get the ball down and play a bit more’. I thought we had good matchups with a number of their players on yellow cards.
We spoke about starting the second half correctly and within two or three minutes, for some reason, we’ve got players in positions they shouldn’t have been.
It (the second goal) comes from Bobby Thomas stepping out with the ball with no plan. He gives it away and he’s advanced with Antony Evans behind him so it gets launched into the channel. Antony doesn’t deal with the header and Bobby doesn’t deal with the second phase.
After that, the lads are scrambling around trying to keep it out of the net and they’ve had a bit of luck. You need a little bit of luck and (Lewis) Wing somehow has found an angle.
I didn’t see. I didn’t even see it go in. I thought it hit defenders on the line but he’s managed to squeeze it in via the post and it’s probably the only spot where it would have beaten our defenders or goalkeeper.
You need a little bit of luck here and today we’ve huffed and puffed. Anyone turning up to watch the game today, if you’re a Wycombe fan, you’ve probably got a neck brace on, although they are probably well versed in the neck muscles because it is hump-it football.
If you’re our fans, you’re disappointed because the side that is more pleasing on the eye has lost the game.
Were you pleased with your start to the game or were you disappointed you didn’t score more goals?
I thought we should have had a penalty. The keeper comes out and the ref says he gets a touch on the ball. I didn’t see the touch but he was closer than me and I’ll have to accept that.
When the game got spaced out, we didn’t mind it. We were 1-0 up and we had to put them to the sword. That’s part of our learning, we’re a young team.
They’ve got to the Championship and bought a bit of experience in big Sam Vokes up there and Ryan Tafazolli at the back, (Jordan) Obita, (Gareth) McCleary, those type of boys who’ve got a good solid CV of work in their careers.
I think our goal today is a bit of naivety. It’s what happens when you have 20 and 21-year-olds at the back.
But I wouldn’t swap anyone in their team for anyone in our team and I wouldn’t swap our style of football for their style of football.
Gareth (Ainsworth), rightly paid £12,000-15,000 a week because they’ve been in the Champ, but I’m telling you, I ain’t standing and watching that on the sideline.
Credit to Gaz. His neck muscles must be really strong, but I am not watching good footballers standing there and booting the ball as far as they can. For me, that’s not how the game is played, but I’m sitting here with no points.
You started today as you finished at Charlton. You can play three at the back and four at the back. Is that something you are happy to mix and match moving forward?
I’ve told you all across my tenure here, when you are developing a team and developing a group, I always try to teach my players and my teams to be multi-faceted across systems and it takes a bit longer to bed it in.
I believe in teaching people rather than using people to get results and moving on, which some managers do and I can get that. I believe in teaching people the game properly and taking a medium-to-long-term approach.
Don’t forget, this is a consolidation year, we were 20th in League Two this time last year and now we’re disappointed we haven’t beaten Wycombe and gone above them and into the play-offs, but I said to the lads in the dressing room ‘Do they put any fear into you?’ Absolutely not.
We’ve got to defend properly and deal with the physicality, but square go, we’ve got them back at our place in four weeks and it will be another good game and another good pitch.
It was a fantastic pitch here today and it’s a pity for us that we couldn’t capitalise on it.
You are 10th and you’ve got two home games coming up to look forward to.
There are no easy games. We are disappointed because we feel that is a game we shouldn’t have lost, certainly after scoring a great goal and there were some great football moments there, little flicks, touches around the corner, some really good stuff that I’ll be pleased with when I watch it back.
But my overriding feeling will be disappointment because football is about winning games and getting points on the board and you don’t get anything for style or for playing the game in what I believe to be the correct manner.
But again, look in five, 10 or 15 years. Credit to Gaz, he’s been at it a long time. If he had a better style of football, he would have probably nicked a bigger, better job than this. I don’t know whether it’s the red snakeskin boots or the leather jacket, or the amount time the ball is in the air that has cost him a move.
But Wycombe might be delighted with it and he has done an incredible job here, getting them in the championship and as I say, they’ve got their way of doing it.
For me, where I want to go and how I want to see the game played, and don’t forget Gaz and I had slightly different trajectories as players. He was a hard-working wide player who hustled and bustled.
Where I played, you couldn’t get away with that. The hustle and bustle wasn’t enough when you’re playing against Patrick Vieira, Steven Gerrard and Roy Keane. You try and hustle and bustle those lads, you’re sitting on the bench watching those games.
We’ve got work to do to catch Wycombe and get above them, but again I wouldn’t swap for any of their players, I wouldn’t swap for their style of football, I wouldn’t swap for their ground albeit the pitch is quite nice, but it’s not as good as ours.
Joey, I think we all want to see officials clamp down on time-wasting and I think the World Cup and the amount of added time given was a good thing. But is booking a player after eight minutes for leaving a free-kick for his goalkeeper time-wasting? Is that a yellow card offence?
It is today in the modern game. I’m baffled by it, I don’t see it.
Fair enough if we are the ageing side who have 180 passes on average. We’re nearer 400.
Fair enough if it’s the 60th minute and we’ve been doing it, but we’re trying to play. We wanted to get a second goal and kick on. We were not here to waste time.
Why would we waste time against a team we’re fitter than and we’re a better footballing team than? They want to break the game up because they are a team that plays for physicality in the set plays.
We don’t want the game to break up and you see in the second half, every throw-in and goal kick is taking ages and the goalie is lying down. We get a bit of momentum in the last five minutes and the keeper lies on the floor and he adds five minutes on.
I don’t get why you would book our players after six or seven minutes when there is no reason to waste time. In the second half, there is clearly a reason to waste time and he (the referee) doesn’t do anything about it.
Bizarre, but we’ve got to be better.
You started brilliantly and when you did play with speed and precision, they struggled to cope. Are you disappointed you didn’t do enough of that particularly in the second half?
Yeah, they scored early so they could sit back in and it suits them. When the game is 1-0 to us, we’ve got to find a second and third goal because I think it puts them away.
We didn’t find it and Gaz’s teams keep probing, they never give in, they keep scrapping. They get a goal in the 22nd minute and it is a really soft goal from our perspective.
Again, just another hump up the pitch. Vokes beats Beefy (James Connolly) in the air and we don’t pick the second phase up and when the lad crosses it in because we’ve got the first contact wrong, we’re in the wrong position.
We came in at 1-1 and we were miles better than them. I sat them down and said ‘Keep passing, move through the thirds and we’ll beat this team’.
Three minutes in, we’ve conceded and it suits Wycombe. They are a great defence as Ipswich and Pompey have found out. They are hard to break down.
We had broken them down but we had to put the game beyond them and that is part of our learning. We’ve got a young group and a lot of young players in there and they will benefit from that experience.
They are among the worst teams to go behind against in the division because of their tactics. If there is something to learn, is it to manage frustration, not rush your play and cope with the agonising nature of the game a bit more?
Yeah, you are right to point that out. We rushed a little bit and people are going for slightly more advantageous passes rather than completing the sets.
The goals we give away are schoolboy, really. We drop from a long punt which we can’t do. I said to the lads ‘Sam Vokes isn’t going to run away from you’. He probably wouldn’t run away from me and he probably wouldn’t run away from you, believe it or not.
What he will do is use his body well. He’s been a fantastic player, he played in the Euros for Wales, he knows his way around a football pitch and he gives you a platform to play off.
The number of times I told them in the build-up ‘Don’t fight him’… I’ve trained with Sam quite a bit. Just give him that distance and attack him as he makes contact with the ball because he looks to use you to roll.
Two long, hopeful clearances have turned into chances for goals for them and we’ll be disappointed when we watch them back because it’s where we’ve lost the game.
If you want to get promoted and want to be a Championship side, you have to iron out those mistakes.
You always run the risk when you take younger defenders. They’ve taken (Jack) Grimmer, (Ryan) Tafazolli, and (Alfie) Mawson because they are through that phase of learning. We take lads on loan or younger players and you have to accept there are going to be a few moments, but I always believe the upside over the whole journey is much more beneficial to take the chance.
It has cost us the game today, a bit of naivety in those moments from both of our centre-backs, but also in the long run I know they will pay us back with results and performances.
Luke McCormick made a really nice impact off the bench. He is a player who has not hit his levels of form this season, so it must have been encouraging to see a good 20 minutes out of him and hopefully he can build on that.
Driving into that box is his game, creating havoc, and it was nice to see him looking more like himself as every passing week comes. He will be a fantastic player for us and he has already shown in his first stint what a good player he is.
He just needs to settle in and rebuild his confidence levels coming out of back-to-back relegations. He looks like he's making progress now.
We’ve got bodies coming back, the window is open in a few days. We want to improve our squad and when you see little moments there, you are like ‘OK, would a couple of quality additions in key areas make a difference for us?’
I think it will, but it isn’t wholesale changes. As you’ve seen, we aren’t a million miles away. We’ve got to iron out some of the small mistakes.
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