Where we played Bristol off the park with some sublime passing and running with the ball, did we change our tactics completely to long ball after long ball yesterday. Everyone knows what Wycombe's tactics are, they're famous for it. They have big physical players and they hit long balls from front to back. They slow the game down and time waste and then hit a long ball. It's what they've done for years. So why did we think the best way to deal with that would be to try to match what they do? From the first minute Collins was time wasting and trying to slow things down. We were hitting long hopeful balls at height to the strikers and Benson, Thomas and Connel may as well have been sat in the stands. I'm no football manager obviously but as soon as we started doing it it seemed like suicide to me to ignore all our strengths (we do have them) and instead try to play to the oppositions strengths.
I think they forced us into playing their game, and it worked for them. They pressed us a lot more than we like and didn't give us chance to play football. Fair play really.
They did, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility to play your way through a press, especially a League One press. Unfortunately we made their press look much better than it was by being far too static. We had youth and energy on our side, but our lack of movement made some of our players look like OAPs. Also, we didn't run at them enough. In the first half, Kitching made a long run out from defence and almost got into the box. Once he'd shown how easy it was to carve them open, players like Thomas and Benson should have been giving it a go, but they rarely dropped deep enough to pick up the ball from the defenders - and when they did look for it, they were ignored and it was hoofed over them. Fair play to Wycombe for a good away win, but we were guilty of aiding and abetting yesterday. And sadly, our current bench options (with the possible exception of Norwood) are unlikely to turn games for us. Early days, though.
Having just watched the highlights, they were happy to take shots at goal, but we pissed around when near their goal. I'm not sure why we reverted to last year's tentative attacking approach, when we saw what long shots could do only a few days earlier.
They got into our player’s heads. Williams, Benson and Thomas in particularly, were hounded most of the game. Those three players all had good games against Bristol. I agree by trying to change our game we played right into their hands
As others have said I think it was because we didnt know how to play them - they were very physical and pressed very well - first half in patches we managed to play through it and looked decent when we did - I was expecting us to do more of it second half but I think they had got into our heads and we didnt know how to handle it. I think had we scored first it would have been a very different game -but we didnt as Wycombe got better as their confidence grew. It was very frustrating Duff needs to fix this quickly though as a fair few other teams will follow the same approach - though probably not Ipswich on Saturday
Bit like us under big Val...a few teams changed their tactics to counter ours. Only the better players (Swansea and a couple of others) out smarted us.
