Three games played, three defeats and we still haven’t managed to win a single point on our return to League 1. On top of that the injury list continues to mount, (to the point where we nearly have a full eleven in the treatment room), and the manager and one of his assistants will now, as I understand it, be banned for the next game at Blackpool after being shown red cards at the end of Tuesday evening’s match. Far from the start to the season we had all been hoping for! However as humbling as the defeat at home to Portsmouth last Saturday was, there were some signs of hope at Wycombe.

Let’s unfortunately start with the bad. For about 20 minutes or so on Saturday I thought we played quite well, we pressed with more intensity, the 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 shape seemed to suit us much better, and although we didn’t carry too much of a threat I felt we contained Portsmouth quite well. Then from a corner from the right Portsmouth midfielder Marlon Pack waved a foot at the ball coming in and it somehow trickled into the bottom corner of the net. It seemed a touch fortunate, but it is completely true that our marking could have been a lot less statuesque while our new keeper, Sam Howes, hardly covered himself in glory. So often in football it is how you react to these kind of setbacks that is important. I have to say that the way the opening goal seemed to knock our confidence wasn’t exactly encouraging.

On the stroke of half-time Howes seemed to come for a cross only to seemingly change his mind and retreat to then try to come for it again. Just as for the first goal our defence was way too passive, and we gave Colby Bishop the freedom of the six yard box to nod home.  From there I think we all knew our chances of getting anything out of the match were very slim, if existent at all.

You could see right from the start of the second half that the side was bereft of any semblance of belief, Omar Beckles’ own goal just 6 minutes in merely sealed a disappointing performance. As painful as it was to listen to the raucous Pompey support singing “We’re just too good for you!”, it was difficult to make any semblance of a case in our favour. The added time penalty simply rubbed salt into our wounds.

After the match Richie summed up our performance saying: “We need to be better in both boxes,” difficult to disagree in all truth.

The way we started the match at Wycombe suggested that there might have been a few home truths shared in the post mortem after Saturday’s capitulation at the hands of Pompey. We moved the ball much more crisply and even fashioned something of a threat even if we didn’t really trouble Stryjek in their goal too much. However as is seeming to become a very unwelcome habit, we undid our decent enough early work with yet another sloppy defensive mistake. Omar Beckles was seemingly beaten too easily/ outmuscled at the far post from a cross into the box and Joe Low slotted home for the hosts.

The way we seemed to raise our game after conceding was one of the positive signs from the performance, with Theo Archibald being deployed in a more traditional wide role on the left allowing us to stretch their backline more effectively than we had been able to against both Charlton and Portsmouth. It was from a cross from Archie on the left of the area that Ruel Sotiriou was able to fire home the equalizer. Our first goal of the new campaign.

Rather than forcing us to drop our heads to drop, Dan Happe’s red card five minutes into the second half seem to invigorate our belief further. Of course at the time, and admittedly from the other end of the ground, I was convinced the dismissal was a harsh decision from a poor referee, but with the benefit of hindsight (ie having watched the highlights) if it was a foul, then Happe was the last man.  

From then on we upped our level again with Ruel Sotiriou and George Moncur forcing saves from Stryjek, only to concede another sloppy goal: once again a cross to the far post was too easy for Low to get to and we found ourselves 2-1 down. Even then and with ten men we continued to create decent chances with Theo forcing a fingertip save and TJ seeing an effort crash off the upright.

With 6 minutes of normal time remaining we shot ourselves in the foot once again when Sam Howes’ parry fell straight to a Wycombe player in the box, and they simply passed through us allowing Taylor to tap it home. There is some mitigation for that one given that we were chasing the game and didn’t really have the numbers back there, but it was a touch soft if nothing else.

Ruel Sotiriou gave us a brief glimmer of hope moments later when he was on the spot to capitalise on a defensive slip, but despite 10 minutes of added time we weren’t able to find a third goal. In the aftermath both Richie Wellens and Paul Terry were shown red cards presumably for something that they said to the referee. Passion from the coaching staff is of course important but equally so is discipline, while many/ the majority of the 845 travelling fans seemed displeased with Mr Parsons, our sharing our thoughts on his performance is unlikely to hinder the team going forward.

It was of course another disappointing result, if not performance, and it is of course still very early days; but with the sheer number of injuries and now a suspension to factor in, the squad is starting to look very thin. Next up is a trip to the seaside to face a Blackpool side that has drawn two and won one of its opening trio of games, it feels very much as if we need a result from that one to get us going for the season, but if we keep giving away potentially avoidable goals we will continue to make life all the harder for ourselves. We live in hope as they say! 

 Up the O’s!