Ainsworth: That wasn't acceptable (From This Is Local London)

Ainsworth: That wasn't acceptable

6:51pm Saturday 9th March 2013 in Latest Sport By Andy Carswell

‘NOT acceptable’ was how Wanderers chief Gareth Ainsworth described his side’s result and performance as they were beaten 4-1 at Rochdale.

In arguably their worst display since Ainsworth was appointed manager Wanderers failed to deal with Dale’s threat at set pieces, which turned the game on its head after Blues had gone in front through Stuart Lewis.

But Ainsworth said it wasn’t only the performance of a previously rock solid back four that disappointed him, with the Blues boss admitting he had to give his men both barrels post match.

He said: “Everyone had a bad day – there’s no one I can look at and say, ‘Superb, you’ve been brilliant’. If I have to speak to individuals about individual things, I’ll do that.

“They are good lads and they have done really well for me but it’s not acceptable to come up to Rochdale and be beaten 4-1.

“The back four have been absolutely fantastic for me over the last two or three months and today we got a couple of things wrong. People were running in different directions. My job is to stop that happening, address it, put it right and we’ll be stronger.

“I can’t blame just the back four, it’s everybody. We win together, we lose together. When we’ve been winning the back four have been there backing everything up and keeping clean sheets, so it’s not about them. I don’t want this to be a witch hunt and picking people out, because we got overrun in midfield, we didn’t create too much out wide and up front we rarely had shots on their goal.

“If you get nil against you’ve always got a chance of getting something, so it will come down to that, but believe me it’s everybody. I’ll never single anyone out for special praise to win a game and I’ll definitely never single anybody out to say ‘It’s your fault for losing a game’. We are together – Wycombe won the game last week and Wycombe have lost the game this week.”

Rochdale’s equalising goal came from a free kick, the second that gave them the lead was from a corner, and the Lancashire outfit wasted a hatful of chances to increase the scoreline as Wanderers struggled to cope at set pieces before two late goals from George Donnelly wrapped things up.

And Ainsworth said it had been a long time since he had seen Wycombe perform so badly at corners.

He said: “Set plays are something we pride ourselves on. We let a couple of them in and went out of the game with that. We’ve prided ourselves on doing really well from them. It’s very rare we’ve been outdone from a set play.

“We can do a lot better. We looked a bit disorganised today, a bit out of sorts.

“At half time I said we’ve got 45 minutes to put this right, we go out and within two minutes we let a corner in, which is really poor.

“It wasn’t us – that’s something I haven’t seen for a while. We seemed to be second to a lot of stuff today.”

Ainsworth is usually a man who can find positives in any situation and he hopes his side won’t defend as badly as they did against Rochdale for the rest of the season.

He said: “It’s all come in one game so maybe that’s a positive – I can say, ‘Let’s sweep that one away and work on the next one’.

“Believe me, we’ll be working hard with the video to put things right. I’ll be a busy man for the next couple of days. I’ll find the positives, tell the lads about them and make sure the negatives don’t happen again, and that’ll make us stronger.”