Pride - (with a couple of sour notes)
Overwhelming feeling of pride at a small club working their proverbials off. Gareth Ainsworth must take huge credit for rebuilding the bond between club and supporters. Wherever many of those players are playing next season, a little bit of them will be forever chairboys.
Sympathy most of all to Sam Saunders - every players dream to play at Wembley, what a shame that his lasted just a few seconds
And the sour notes?
1) Phil Brown when they scored their goal deciding not to celebrate with his own fans but instead to gesticulate towards ours. Classless tw*t.
2) I know people like to stand up at football, tbh I do myself. But when you know there are young kids sitting behind you, when you have seen a old gentleman on sticks barely able to climb the steps to his seat behind you, is it really too much to ask for most of the game at least to show the basic human decency of sitting down so that they can watch the game too?
Anyway another memorable occasion, if not the right result, more bonding of club and supporter that hopefully can only bode well for the future. Roll on August. Thank you Gareth Ainsworth - already secured as a Wycombe legend.
Comments
Interesting comment Dev on the standing issue. There was very nearly a punch up near me because of this, and between Wycombe supporters. Once a group stand up, everyone else has to, and of course those that start the standing could not give a flying toss about the kids or elderly behind them. I saw one Dad imploring them to sit down as his two children couldn't see...took not a blind bit of notice. Selfish, self centred peasants. You know who you are.
Sadly I doubt that Phil Brown was the only one who had that sort of attitude. I don't think we gained many new friends with our time wasting for the last 25 mins. If we'd have carried on playing our normal game perhaps we'd all be looking forward to div1 football next season. Southend were there for the taking but you don't get too many goals when you're holding the ball up near the corner flag or feigning injury.
We had to move seats because of the standing up, lot of the fans acted like Chelsea supporters. Guess that would explain the extra numbers!
@Doob I couldn't agree with you more, we had a couple of unbelievable chances to add a second but chose to time waste. I love the club but those extra time time wasting tactics really left us with egg on our faces
Sadly I agree, when we broke away (last minute of the game), was it Wood ran the length of the field with no backup or runners what's so ever. That's where the ball should have been up their end NOT all hang back near our penalty area, Instead they got the ball back and rest was history. Oh well League 2, hopefully we take the momentum into next campaign.
Just hope we nail a central defender like Mawson (Rowe will do) striker and winger like Jason Banton (ex Plymouth winger). Plus Saunder type of player. Who knows we may get Saunders to return for a few games to regain match fitness lol.
It was a bit embarrassing. Going for the corner flag with 20 minutes left didn't look great. I've some sympathy as we needed to conserve energy as we looked knackered but think we should have been a little more positive. Still Gareth still has a lot to learn and he did nearly get the better of the orange one. On the subject of Phil Brown - I can't comment on what he did immediately after they scored but I thought he was quite generous both before and after about what a brilliant job Gareth has done this year so he went up a notch or two in my estimation
I don't have anything against Brown particularly but I've seen some of his other comments on other games/teams and they tend to smack of Mourinho-style false magnanimity to me.
Saw the brown incident when they scored..was not the best but he redemmed himself during the penalty shootout and post match comments.
Some of the best teams in the world have lost in a shoot out, I am just thankful we did not do a Swindon
What no one seems to have noted is that when Bloomfield takes the ball down field, Craig can't follow him or indeed run back and tackle as he is clearly suffering either cramp or the effect of a muscle strain. He hobbles down the wing slower than me on a good day.
I seem to remember that Craig has taken penalties before so suggests to me he wasn't faking it as I expected him to be in the first five penalty takers.
This enables Southend to get the initial cross in too easily and then, sadly, Alfie drops back too close to Lynch. If Lynch had pushed him out a but he might have moved forward and blocked the shot.
For me these were the small margins between victory and defeat not our tactics in trying to defend the 1-0 lead. Just imagine the comments if players had been racing forward to score a second and we had conceeded a goal on the counter attack.
I was incredibly proud of our team performance, on and off the field, and look forward with some excitement to the start of next season.
I agree with the comment about Craig. He was clearly hobbling at the end and couldn't run. If he could he would have closed down their no 3 (?) and we'd be planning our trips up north next year
Yeah, we'd noted that Craig was clearly injured and was hobbling about during the last few minutes. I'd imagine this is why he didn't take a penalty.
I think the club tweeted yesterday that he was advised by he medical staff not to take one.
I wonder if that's why his contract hasn't been resolved today like everyone else's.
@Twizz Yeah, I saw that too. I have no problem with running the clock down for the last 10 mins, round the corner flag, etc, but to start doing it with 25 mins to go seemed much too negative. As for the feigning of injury, it was no wonder Southend wouldn't give the ball back from a throw after yet another stoppage to an 'injured' player (JJ I think). It reminded me of our performance at Pompey where we went ahead and then our time wasting disrupted our game more than theirs and they got a draw. Any nuetrals watching our Wembley performance who had heard about our time wasting reputation will have seen how deserved it is. It's annoying because for the last few months we'd seemed to have moved on from that.
We actually did much more time wasting in the 1st period of extra time than the 2nd. I did wonder if Ainsworth had a word with the players during the break, as yes, I thought it was rather ridiculous. Not so sure about the injury feigning though, as it was I think Yennaris who was down in the 2nd period and he was subsequently subbed.
Think there was 3/4 minutes of injury time in both halves. But most of the first half stoppage time was for the treatment and substitution of Saunders. In extra time it was completely sensible to waste as much time as possible. Which was not helped by the fact that we had to use a sub after 30 seconds. Would have been complete madness not to have done so particularly when some of our players were dead on their feet. Unfortunately we didn't do it quite well enough.
Southend were there for the taking. You can be sure that most nuetrals watching would have felt we got what we deserved. We have a similar reputation to Stevenage.
Agree with the Stevenage comment, sadly, despite the fact I'm hugely proud of what GA has achieved. I think Stevenage pioneered the "energy drink injury break", and we've adopted it wholeheartedly. I can't remember the game but there was one "injury" where the physio even had a stack of drinks lined up which he threw out to the players as he came on to treat the "injured" player. Mmm.
Hi everyone. Im new here.
I think Phil Brown is a very good manager as is GA.
The only thing I would say is Ainsworth seems to think he is still playing. He continuously came on the pitch & stopped the flow of the game even when we were attacking. Albeit the referee lost complete control of the game, I still really don't like managers who appeal for every single decision as it makes you look desperate.
If he came onto the field of play while Southend was attacking he would have been sent off. Yes we waste a bit of time when are winning like pretty well every team in this league. But to expect a team not to do so in the last 15 mins of extra time when our players were dead on their feet is daft.
HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SENT OFF. BUT THE REF HAD ALREADY LOST ALL CONTROL.
NOT GIVING SOUTHEND A CLEAR PENALTY. WRONGLY GIVING THE FREEKICK FOR THE GOAL. MAKING SOUTHEND GIVE THE BALL BACK TO THAT PUSSY WHOLE
lol..Mr left foot..Just have a look at any manager or any player..they appeal even if they know 100% it's not theirs..its all part of the game..
Part of wycombes desperation game
phil brown barely appealed for the pen. he knew that ref weren't giving us shit
Strange how you haven't mentioned your keeper's ridiculous gamesmanship during the shootout, including being behind the goal tugging the net when the penalty taker was preparing himself. One thing to be a bad loser, but it takes a special kind of a**ehole to be a bad winner.
Thr keeper was a disgrace, as was the bottle job ref