Clearly people still believe in Ainsworth and that is absolutely right bearing in mind what he has done for our club. But lets go down fighting and go for wins. We will not survive being pleased with draws.
Whose pleased with a draw? The universal opinion is that last night was a terrible game, made worse by the fact Birmingham were there for the taking. Even GA described it as 'League 2 standard,' which given his commitment to either being positive or non-committal is pretty significant.
I don't have any experience in the professional game, so i won't bore you with my tactical or formation thoughts, but i will say this. I could handle relegation if we were simply outclassed in every game and never stood a chance. I can handle relegation if i felt like we put ourselves in the best position to win a game 46 times this season. But what worries me is that we'll go down thinking about the points we've left on the table in game like last nights.
@floyd - Ainsworth said he was pleased with a draw in his post match interview. Probably the reason why he didn't go more adventurous in the last 15 minutes.
Gaz was in his post-match interview. Ironic, people on here talking about not giving up until the final kick of the season when the manager seems to have given up already.
I really do understand the frustration over games like last night and most of the comments in the gasroom have been restrained and thoughtful (unlike the FB page).
There are odd exceptions like references to Sunday League football or that old cliche ‘tactically inept’, but there is a level of insight in the gasroom that you don’t get on the majority of club forums.
We all have our thoughts on styles of play, formations etc and I agree with many of the things that have been said.
The bottom line is that we find ourselves in a division that is acknowledged as one of the best in Europe with the majority of the squad that were playing in League One just a few months ago. It was always going to be tough and we are not equipped financially or playing wise to compete on level terms with most clubs in the division.
We all enjoy a good moan in these frustrating times, but I like to look at the bigger picture and remember where we have come from and how quickly we have got there.
Just three years ago, we lost home and away to Morecambe in League Two; our next fixture is against Nottingham Forest.
I know which division I prefer to be in, even if we are bottom of the table.
Gaz was in his post-match interview. Ironic, people on here talking about not giving up until the final kick of the season when the manager seems to have given up already.
I’d only seen his comments to the BBC, which were slightly more forthright. If Ainsworth didn’t give up the week before Torquay, he’s unlikely to have given up now.
I do appreciate what @glasshalffull says about where we are and who we are facing. Doesn't take away the frustration. What I would say is that with 15 minutes to go GA could have rolled the dice and gone for it with McCleary and Horgan (who we don't know is fit of course) and if we had lost 0-1 we would have been crushed. Saturday was a blow, losing last night as well would have been a knock out. We could not lose last night regardless.
There were a couple of below par performances and one great save by their keeper which would have changed everything. Two players making their debuts and bedding down into our team, and in one case playing the most they have since July.
Saturday is another must win, every game is a must win, and most importantly it is a can win.
Lovely to see so many posts p1ssed off that we only managed to draw with Birmingham. I remember wanting to kick the metaphorical cat after losing to Hendon and alike.
It shows a lack of understanding of what Gareth Ainsworth is all about to suggest that he has given up.
That is not in his personality and never will be.
@eric_plant said:
It's pretty insulting to Gaz to suggest he's given up in my opinion
Poor comment
He was pleased with a point, and played a system that was designed to not get more than that, against one of the worst teams in the division. If that's how we're approaching a game against Birmingham, we're not trying to stay up. I'm baffled as to how anyone can think otherwise. One point per game between now and the end of the season won't be enough to stay up. If we're not going to try to get more than that from this game, where the hell are we going to try to get them?
@eric_plant said:
It's pretty insulting to Gaz to suggest he's given up in my opinion
Poor comment
He was pleased with a point, and played a system that was designed to not get more than that, against one of the worst teams in the division. If that's how we're approaching a game against Birmingham, we're not trying to stay up. I'm baffled as to how anyone can think otherwise. One point per game between now and the end of the season won't be enough to stay up. If we're not going to try to get more than that from this game, where the hell are we going to try to get them?
I suppose the counter argument to that is that Birmingham played a similar cancelling game and a loss to them would have been a disaster. So two managers not wanting to lose is going to result in a lack of free flowing football from both. It was a question of which manager rolled the dice. Neither was the answer.
@eric_plant said:
It's pretty insulting to Gaz to suggest he's given up in my opinion
Poor comment
He was pleased with a point, and played a system that was designed to not get more than that, against one of the worst teams in the division. If that's how we're approaching a game against Birmingham, we're not trying to stay up. I'm baffled as to how anyone can think otherwise. One point per game between now and the end of the season won't be enough to stay up. If we're not going to try to get more than that from this game, where the hell are we going to try to get them?
He was pleased not to lose after a 7-2 thrashing that damaged the confidence of his players and made them scared of defeat, What don’t you understand about that?
I’m baffled as to how you can interpret that as not trying to stay up. If that was the case he could have sent out a team designed to lose. He didn’t say he would be pleased with a point in every remaining game, just in this particular circumstance.
@drcongo I get the feeling of deflation and despondency after the game but surely a learned man and seasoned WWFC observer like yourself would have recognised he was pleased with not losing but not happy with the performance. The idea that he is happy for or resigned to his managerial reign to have a 'gutless' relegation on it is quite bizarre.
Last night was a very strange and worrying un-Wycombe (and GA) like performance. But let's give the guy some credit! He knows a lot more about the state of the squad and the effects of Covid and the training lay off that any of us. We tend to play better in the 2nd half of games, so last night's display coupled with the 2nd half against Spurs and Brentford possibly hints at a squad that is not quite recovered it's fitness.
However you think you can interpret what Gaz said post match last night you should know enough about the man's character and ethos to know that it's simply not in his nature to give up.
Clearly Ainsworth knows what he is doing. However the frustration is , we settled for a point when with a bit more adventure in the substitutions , we could of had three. I know the downside of another defeat but Ainsworth has set a target of 35 points before the Brentford game for the second half of the season and we need to take every opportunity to get three against clubs near the bottom.
@eric_plant said:
I'm getting over last night's despondency and already thinking if we win our next two games we're back on track
Such is life as a football fan
I've just been having similar thoughts. I think most people thought 4 wins a draw and a defeat out of the next 6 games would pull us back into some kind of contention.
Many of us probably had last night down as one of the wins needed, so only coming away with a point became more frustrating. The Forest and Weds results have exacerbated the situation as well.
Last night set the stall out to ensure we had a building block, a clean sheet is a positive and another point.
Whilst I'm frustrated as time moves on throughout the day I'm forgetting about last night and looking forward to winning at the weekend! Fingers crossed!
@drcongo said:
He was pleased with a point, and played a system that was designed to not get more than that, against one of the worst teams in the division. If that's how we're approaching a game against Birmingham, we're not trying to stay up. I'm baffled as to how anyone can think otherwise. One point per game between now and the end of the season won't be enough to stay up. If we're not going to try to get more than that from this game, where the hell are we going to try to get them?
Whilst I partly agree with your post, criticism of Gareth needs to be tempered against the fact that Birmingham's wage budget for this year is reported as being £32.8m which is probably about treble ours.
Looking at both games against Birmingham, there seemed to me very little difference between the level of quality on the pitch (or lack of) between the two sides despite the big gap in wages. I suspect that Gareth if given that budget, would be able to get that "creative midfielder" that some posters are haranguing him for not signing.
After the chore of watching last night (respect @Quarterman if you watched it twice) I do feel a lot more upbeat today.
We have had our share of drab performances and awful games before and this will hopefully fade away.
What won’t is Allsop’s second save. It’s one of those few great moments from a Wycombe football match that will hopefully stay with me forever. Such a pity I only witnessed it on a screen. It was one of those ‘that couldn’t possibly have happened by the law of physics moments.”
I think the way forward has to be Horgan and McCleary if both are fit. They do bring an element of class and if we get the balance right we should be strong enough to start to pick up points.
I get why yesterday was about not losing after Saturday, but having achieved that we do have to move on.
COVID - This I'm taking as the only other possible reason for last nights display. We have definitely not been at the races since.
Budget - Irrelevant. Everyone else in this division has a bigger budget than us, we can make that excuse every week but it's not going to keep us up.
The point I'm failing to make is - if we don't try and get 3 points against the teams just above us, then it's useless. Especially those in terrible form like Birmingham. We could go on to get 3 points off all of the top 6 teams but it will be completely meaningless if the teams just above us pick up 18 points on those weeks too. People on here got shouted down for describing this as a must win game but when you're in a relegation fight the games against those just above you are the ones you must try and win. We took off the only two players who had a shot last night and replaced them with two players who barely touched the ball. We left Blooms on for 90 minutes when it was clear he was struggling after 15. These aren't trying to win actions.
Obviously I'll watch every game for the rest of the season, and obviously even if we get relegated I sincerely hope that Gareth stays on. But after last night I think it's delusional to think we've got a chance of staying up. If you don't allow players to shoot, you don't score goals, you don't win games and you don't stay up.
I've been very wrong before (see Bayo signing) and I'll hold my hands up if I'm wrong again. I really hope I am.
@drcongo said:
COVID - This I'm taking as the only other possible reason for last nights display. We have definitely not been at the races since.
Budget - Irrelevant. Everyone else in this division has a bigger budget than us, we can make that excuse every week but it's not going to keep us up.
The point I'm failing to make is - if we don't try and get 3 points against the teams just above us, then it's useless. Especially those in terrible form like Birmingham. We could go on to get 3 points off all of the top 6 teams but it will be completely meaningless if the teams just above us pick up 18 points on those weeks too. People on here got shouted down for describing this as a must win game but when you're in a relegation fight the games against those just above you are the ones you must try and win. We took off the only two players who had a shot last night and replaced them with two players who barely touched the ball. We left Blooms on for 90 minutes when it was clear he was struggling after 15. These aren't trying to win actions.
Obviously I'll watch every game for the rest of the season, and obviously even if we get relegated I sincerely hope that Gareth stays on. But after last night I think it's delusional to think we've got a chance of staying up. If you don't allow players to shoot, you don't score goals, you don't win games and you don't stay up.
I've been very wrong before (see Bayo signing) and I'll hold my hands up if I'm wrong again. I really hope I am.
Totally agree with your comments. Need to win games especially against our closest rivals and yes they are must win games despite the cries of many posters. Why do we keep taking Uche off and replacing him with Bayo. Bayo and Blooms have been fantastic servants to this club and rightly deserve all the accolades. But Father Time has caught up with them, and unfortunately are not offering too much. We have other options.
You may have a point about which players were brought on, but until he returned recently, Uche had not played for months due to a bad injury. The surest way to lose him again would be to play him for 90 minutes three times every week. You could see he was tiring after doing so much running and taking a battering from their defenders.
I know chatting to a couple of Derby supporting colleagues that they were shocked how bad their two performances were after their Covid lay-off. Things have certainly improved since then, so it’s probably worth taking into account.
From a few people I know who’ve had it, there seems to be very little consistency in how it affected them. Anecdotal I know, but the one who ended up in a high dependency unit on oxygen for 5 days was the youngest (45 years old), not overweight, otherwise fit and healthy.
"Budget - Irrelevant. Everyone else in this division has a bigger budget than us"
This point may be getting boring but that doesn't make it irrelevant. We look at them as being rubbish and why aren't we attacking more whereas maybe Ainsworth does see it as a point gained against what is a much bigger club with much more resource. He'll also be looking at the progress of individuals he'll work with for a long time.
If we can't get our targets it limits what we can do and Ainsworth has had great success with a combination of defensive football where necessary and slow and steady management not bawling people out or continually changing things. It's frustrating at times but it's maybe understandable. He doesn't call for more money or decry the budget set, he gets on with it and the owners, no doubt in consultation with him made their decisions on how much it was reasonable to invest in the playing side.
Although a lot of the focus on last night's game rightly applies to the tactics there was an Interesting similar point above: Are we really that far behind the likes of Luton in terms of finances and squad?
Well their goalie cost over £1m. They've just taken Tom Ince on loan, beyond that everything is undisclosed these days so it's difficult to tell. Transfermarkt.com , who no doubt include a lot of guesswork, but possibly apply the same rules to all, have their squad valued at £18.23m and ours generously at £7.43m. They also owe a bloody fortune based on their new stadium and no doubt need to
still be in a higher division when that happens.
Comments
Clearly people still believe in Ainsworth and that is absolutely right bearing in mind what he has done for our club. But lets go down fighting and go for wins. We will not survive being pleased with draws.
Whose pleased with a draw? The universal opinion is that last night was a terrible game, made worse by the fact Birmingham were there for the taking. Even GA described it as 'League 2 standard,' which given his commitment to either being positive or non-committal is pretty significant.
I don't have any experience in the professional game, so i won't bore you with my tactical or formation thoughts, but i will say this. I could handle relegation if we were simply outclassed in every game and never stood a chance. I can handle relegation if i felt like we put ourselves in the best position to win a game 46 times this season. But what worries me is that we'll go down thinking about the points we've left on the table in game like last nights.
@floyd - Ainsworth said he was pleased with a draw in his post match interview. Probably the reason why he didn't go more adventurous in the last 15 minutes.
Gaz was in his post-match interview. Ironic, people on here talking about not giving up until the final kick of the season when the manager seems to have given up already.
I really do understand the frustration over games like last night and most of the comments in the gasroom have been restrained and thoughtful (unlike the FB page).
There are odd exceptions like references to Sunday League football or that old cliche ‘tactically inept’, but there is a level of insight in the gasroom that you don’t get on the majority of club forums.
We all have our thoughts on styles of play, formations etc and I agree with many of the things that have been said.
The bottom line is that we find ourselves in a division that is acknowledged as one of the best in Europe with the majority of the squad that were playing in League One just a few months ago. It was always going to be tough and we are not equipped financially or playing wise to compete on level terms with most clubs in the division.
We all enjoy a good moan in these frustrating times, but I like to look at the bigger picture and remember where we have come from and how quickly we have got there.
Just three years ago, we lost home and away to Morecambe in League Two; our next fixture is against Nottingham Forest.
I know which division I prefer to be in, even if we are bottom of the table.
I’d only seen his comments to the BBC, which were slightly more forthright. If Ainsworth didn’t give up the week before Torquay, he’s unlikely to have given up now.
And as much as I like GA, he rarely says anything off-script in his post match interviews.
It's pretty insulting to Gaz to suggest he's given up in my opinion
Poor comment
I do appreciate what @glasshalffull says about where we are and who we are facing. Doesn't take away the frustration. What I would say is that with 15 minutes to go GA could have rolled the dice and gone for it with McCleary and Horgan (who we don't know is fit of course) and if we had lost 0-1 we would have been crushed. Saturday was a blow, losing last night as well would have been a knock out. We could not lose last night regardless.
There were a couple of below par performances and one great save by their keeper which would have changed everything. Two players making their debuts and bedding down into our team, and in one case playing the most they have since July.
Saturday is another must win, every game is a must win, and most importantly it is a can win.
Lovely to see so many posts p1ssed off that we only managed to draw with Birmingham. I remember wanting to kick the metaphorical cat after losing to Hendon and alike.
It shows a lack of understanding of what Gareth Ainsworth is all about to suggest that he has given up.
That is not in his personality and never will be.
Got to agree here. I believe Gareth believes he can keep us up.
I'm getting over last night's despondency and already thinking if we win our next two games we're back on track
Such is life as a football fan
He was pleased with a point, and played a system that was designed to not get more than that, against one of the worst teams in the division. If that's how we're approaching a game against Birmingham, we're not trying to stay up. I'm baffled as to how anyone can think otherwise. One point per game between now and the end of the season won't be enough to stay up. If we're not going to try to get more than that from this game, where the hell are we going to try to get them?
I suppose the counter argument to that is that Birmingham played a similar cancelling game and a loss to them would have been a disaster. So two managers not wanting to lose is going to result in a lack of free flowing football from both. It was a question of which manager rolled the dice. Neither was the answer.
He was pleased not to lose after a 7-2 thrashing that damaged the confidence of his players and made them scared of defeat, What don’t you understand about that?
I’m baffled as to how you can interpret that as not trying to stay up. If that was the case he could have sent out a team designed to lose. He didn’t say he would be pleased with a point in every remaining game, just in this particular circumstance.
@glasshalffull You're conveniently ignoring this part of my post:
@drcongo I get the feeling of deflation and despondency after the game but surely a learned man and seasoned WWFC observer like yourself would have recognised he was pleased with not losing but not happy with the performance. The idea that he is happy for or resigned to his managerial reign to have a 'gutless' relegation on it is quite bizarre.
Last night was a very strange and worrying un-Wycombe (and GA) like performance. But let's give the guy some credit! He knows a lot more about the state of the squad and the effects of Covid and the training lay off that any of us. We tend to play better in the 2nd half of games, so last night's display coupled with the 2nd half against Spurs and Brentford possibly hints at a squad that is not quite recovered it's fitness.
However you think you can interpret what Gaz said post match last night you should know enough about the man's character and ethos to know that it's simply not in his nature to give up.
He deserves an awful lot more respect than that
Clearly Ainsworth knows what he is doing. However the frustration is , we settled for a point when with a bit more adventure in the substitutions , we could of had three. I know the downside of another defeat but Ainsworth has set a target of 35 points before the Brentford game for the second half of the season and we need to take every opportunity to get three against clubs near the bottom.
I've just been having similar thoughts. I think most people thought 4 wins a draw and a defeat out of the next 6 games would pull us back into some kind of contention.
Many of us probably had last night down as one of the wins needed, so only coming away with a point became more frustrating. The Forest and Weds results have exacerbated the situation as well.
Last night set the stall out to ensure we had a building block, a clean sheet is a positive and another point.
Whilst I'm frustrated as time moves on throughout the day I'm forgetting about last night and looking forward to winning at the weekend! Fingers crossed!
Whilst I partly agree with your post, criticism of Gareth needs to be tempered against the fact that Birmingham's wage budget for this year is reported as being £32.8m which is probably about treble ours.
Looking at both games against Birmingham, there seemed to me very little difference between the level of quality on the pitch (or lack of) between the two sides despite the big gap in wages. I suspect that Gareth if given that budget, would be able to get that "creative midfielder" that some posters are haranguing him for not signing.
After the chore of watching last night (respect @Quarterman if you watched it twice) I do feel a lot more upbeat today.
We have had our share of drab performances and awful games before and this will hopefully fade away.
What won’t is Allsop’s second save. It’s one of those few great moments from a Wycombe football match that will hopefully stay with me forever. Such a pity I only witnessed it on a screen. It was one of those ‘that couldn’t possibly have happened by the law of physics moments.”
I think the way forward has to be Horgan and McCleary if both are fit. They do bring an element of class and if we get the balance right we should be strong enough to start to pick up points.
I get why yesterday was about not losing after Saturday, but having achieved that we do have to move on.
COVID - This I'm taking as the only other possible reason for last nights display. We have definitely not been at the races since.
Budget - Irrelevant. Everyone else in this division has a bigger budget than us, we can make that excuse every week but it's not going to keep us up.
The point I'm failing to make is - if we don't try and get 3 points against the teams just above us, then it's useless. Especially those in terrible form like Birmingham. We could go on to get 3 points off all of the top 6 teams but it will be completely meaningless if the teams just above us pick up 18 points on those weeks too. People on here got shouted down for describing this as a must win game but when you're in a relegation fight the games against those just above you are the ones you must try and win. We took off the only two players who had a shot last night and replaced them with two players who barely touched the ball. We left Blooms on for 90 minutes when it was clear he was struggling after 15. These aren't trying to win actions.
Obviously I'll watch every game for the rest of the season, and obviously even if we get relegated I sincerely hope that Gareth stays on. But after last night I think it's delusional to think we've got a chance of staying up. If you don't allow players to shoot, you don't score goals, you don't win games and you don't stay up.
I've been very wrong before (see Bayo signing) and I'll hold my hands up if I'm wrong again. I really hope I am.
Totally agree with your comments. Need to win games especially against our closest rivals and yes they are must win games despite the cries of many posters. Why do we keep taking Uche off and replacing him with Bayo. Bayo and Blooms have been fantastic servants to this club and rightly deserve all the accolades. But Father Time has caught up with them, and unfortunately are not offering too much. We have other options.
I think there's a difference between being glad to get a point because you played shit, and only trying to get a point from the game
(you weren't the only one wrong about Bayo)
You may have a point about which players were brought on, but until he returned recently, Uche had not played for months due to a bad injury. The surest way to lose him again would be to play him for 90 minutes three times every week. You could see he was tiring after doing so much running and taking a battering from their defenders.
Exactly this.
I know chatting to a couple of Derby supporting colleagues that they were shocked how bad their two performances were after their Covid lay-off. Things have certainly improved since then, so it’s probably worth taking into account.
From a few people I know who’ve had it, there seems to be very little consistency in how it affected them. Anecdotal I know, but the one who ended up in a high dependency unit on oxygen for 5 days was the youngest (45 years old), not overweight, otherwise fit and healthy.
"Budget - Irrelevant. Everyone else in this division has a bigger budget than us"
This point may be getting boring but that doesn't make it irrelevant. We look at them as being rubbish and why aren't we attacking more whereas maybe Ainsworth does see it as a point gained against what is a much bigger club with much more resource. He'll also be looking at the progress of individuals he'll work with for a long time.
If we can't get our targets it limits what we can do and Ainsworth has had great success with a combination of defensive football where necessary and slow and steady management not bawling people out or continually changing things. It's frustrating at times but it's maybe understandable. He doesn't call for more money or decry the budget set, he gets on with it and the owners, no doubt in consultation with him made their decisions on how much it was reasonable to invest in the playing side.
Although a lot of the focus on last night's game rightly applies to the tactics there was an Interesting similar point above: Are we really that far behind the likes of Luton in terms of finances and squad?
Well their goalie cost over £1m. They've just taken Tom Ince on loan, beyond that everything is undisclosed these days so it's difficult to tell. Transfermarkt.com , who no doubt include a lot of guesswork, but possibly apply the same rules to all, have their squad valued at £18.23m and ours generously at £7.43m. They also owe a bloody fortune based on their new stadium and no doubt need to
still be in a higher division when that happens.