Adams Park Drama
The club recently published that list of ten home games in the last 4+ seasons which ended with late winners or equalizers. I had a stab at building out the complete list of winners from 89 minutes onwards from the 2017-18 promotion season up to now:
2017-18: Crewe - 90th minute
2017-18: Carlisle - 96th minute
2017-18: Swindon - 89th minute
2018-19: Scunthorpe - 94th minute
2018-19: Doncaster - 94th minute
2019-20: MK Dons - 90th minute
2019-20: Southend - 92nd minute
2019-20: Doncaster: 92nd minute
2019-20: Rochdale: 94th minute
2020-21: Bristol City - 93rd minute
2021-22: Morecambe - 92nd minute
2021-22: Crewe - 97th minute
That is 12 last minute or stoppage time winners in 93 (I think?) home games in that span. So, even though two of those seasons were relegation battles, this drama is happening in around 13% of our home games, or once every 7.75 games!
If you take out the Bristol City game from last season owing to the lack of fans (with the argument that the drama is related to the home atmosphere), it goes to 11 wins in 70 games, which is almost 16% of our home games with fans, or once every 6.36 games!
Incredibly, the Crewe, Carlisle, Doncaster, and Southend all also included late equalizers before the even later winners, so that is double the drama. Then you have last minute equalizers in draws such as Peterborough in the Close Quarters season and QPR last season.
I wish there was an easy way to do comparative stats with other clubs when it comes to these late winners, as I do wonder how this rate of drama compares to other stadiums! It has got to the point where a Wycombe fan could miss a game, see the club tweet 'It Has Happened Again!' and know that it is an injury time dramatic winner.
Comments
Just had a look at the aways
2017/18:
3-3 v Carlisle (PCH 90+4)
3-2 v Crewe (CMS 90+2)
2018/19:
2-2 v Pompey (JJ (P) 89)
2-1 v Accrington (Samuel 90+1)
2019/20:
None - boring!
2020/21:
2-1 v Birmingham (Pedersen (OG) 90+2)
Honourable mention for 3-2 v Huddersfield (Knight 87)
2021/22:
1-1 v Wigan (Stewart 90)
A home draw I forgot about (somehow): 2-2 v Fleetwood in the playoffs, Fred on 94 minutes. A wonderful moment, though we were home and dry without the goal too.
How does this compare against the average across the leagues?
That’s what @Shev was wondering @Ed_ and I wouldn’t be surprised if @ReturnToSenda is already on the case!
Didn’t we go through a spell when Tony Adams was manager when we managed to somehow let a last minute winner or equaliser in for about 4 or 5 games in a row? Or did it just seem that?
Can only remember the 2 spells under him (happily accepting relegation and post dismal attempt at rebuild in a lower division) where we barely scored a goal.
Bloody hell, not even I have that kind of time on my hands!
I had a check back. I wasn’t far out. Four defeats to injury time goals (3 of them at home) in Adams first seven games in charge. Bleak times (that somehow managed to get bleaker)
I’ve obviously got too much time on my hands. Not sure how relevant it is, but a March 2018 article in the Mirror covered last minute winners in the Premier League (so since 1992). Liverpool had 30. Arsenal 25 and a few clubs on 20. So rare for a team (in the Premier anyway) to average more than 1 a season.
So I’d guess we have been spoilt a bit relevant to other clubs in recent times.
Worth mentioning though in one article on the subject it did mention that the more injury team you get the more likely these are to occur. And we do seem to generate more than most…
Great research @bookertease. I assume that is home and away too. For us to be basically be averaging three per season at home in front of a crowd is quite incredible in that case.
All this does is solidify the feeling we've all got, and what we've all known for a very long time, that there is no better team on earth to be a supporter of than Wycombe
Not even joking
Surely for this to be a fair comparison we need to work out how many we've conceded in the last minute too?
I can think of a few notable ones:
Luton (H) in the League Two promotion season
Cambridge (H) in League Two promotion season
Oxford (A) the next year
Shrewsbury (A) around the same time as the Oxford game
Sunderland (H) also around the same time as Oxford and Shrewsbury
Rotherham (H) first game of last season
Norwich (A) at the start of last season too
And I'm sure there's a few others I've forgotten, and a few that were not quite as late like the Sunderland away game in 2018-19