Wycombe 3-3 MK Dons: Dons Profit From Duff Defending
MK Dons made the short trip down the road to visit Wycombe this weekend, with both sides sharing the unfortunate honour of being part of an elite group of teams yet to pick up a league win so far this season. Neither have had any trouble scoring goals, but both have struggled keeping them out, and they came into this fixture looking to rectify that record. You’ve read the title, so you know how well that went for them. The Chairboys and the Dons are both proving difficult to beat, but even harder to lose to.
If there’s one thing you can’t accuse either of these sides of, it’s making things boring for the neutral. Not only did they put on a high-scoring, back-and-forth display with some brilliant goals sprinkled throughout, both sets of players also managed to send their managers half insane through their performances. If you know anything about Michael Duff and Paul Warne, you know they aren’t strangers to a colourful interview or two, or three, or about a hundred over the course of their careers, and the post-match fallout here was really something to behold. It feels a shame to deprive you of it, so I think it’d be best to relive the game through the immortal words of two very peeved off head coaches. You’ll be pleased to know it was neither of their faults.
Paul Warne has built a sterling reputation for himself in the lower tiers of the Football League for building promotion-ready teams that achieve success by being immaculate at the basics, not least set pieces. He notoriously dragged Derby County out of League One a few years ago by coaching them to be the most dangerous side in the league in both boxes, technical ability be damned. As fun as that season was, sitting through his interview after this game had me flinching with PTSD from the hours I spend listening to him explain away some dire performances over the years. It came as a surprise to everyone, not least Paul Warne himself it seems, that MK found themselves 2-0 after half an hour, with both goals coming from set-pieces.
The first saw Dan Casey wriggle away from his marker and head home unchallenged six yards out from a Caolan Boyd-Munce corner with 11 minutes on the clock. Conceding from a corner is one thing, but losing your man and allowing him a free effort at goal is totally unacceptable in the Paul Warne playbook. Wycombe’s second goal was a deflected edge-of-the-box thunder-strike from Ewan Henderson, who was given all the time in the world to line his shot up as the ball trickled to him after a poor clearance from a long throw. Again, some shambolic defending from MK in set-play situations.
The rage from their gaffer is understandable. If you’re Paul Warne, big if, then your raison d’être is to coach solid sides that don’t give away goals in such a sloppy manner, and certainly don’t do it twice in half an hour away from home at one of your big rivals. He definitely hasn’t coached them this way, and he made that very clear, noting that “two people just didn’t do their job today” was the reasoning behind their first half collapse. You know it was bad because a football purist/dinosaur like Warne started quoting xG numbers in his post match interview. Someone check his temperature. In all fairness, Wycombe did struggle to create too much outside of these set-piece situations, which makes their failure to defend them even more damning. Warne then went on to thank the fans for booing his team off at half time and assured them that he would’ve done the same, I think it’s fair to assume they got a rocket up them during the break. And rightly so.
I think it’s also fair to say that it more than paid off. MK Dons made two changes at the break, just as they had to do in the midweek defeat to Wigan, Dan Crowley and Callum Paterson entering the fray on this occasion. There’s making an instant impact and then there’s grabbing a goal and two assists between you to flip the game around and put your side 3-2 up before the hour mark in a game where you looked utterly hopeless. It begs the question, why did they not just play from the start?
Calling Callum Patterson’s first contribution an “assist” is maybe overselling it a drop or two. He played a simple sideways ball in the midfield to Aaron Collins, who decided he wanted to play pretend Kevin De Bruyne for a minute, shimmying past his defender before rocketing a shot from 25 yards into the top corner off the underside of the crossbar. Wallop.
Keen to return the favour after his teammates masterful creative exploits, it was Collins who turned provider to put the ball on a plate for Patterson just four minutes later to level things up. A sweeping cross-field ball from Dons right-back Gethin Jones was missed by attackers and defenders alike, bouncing through to Collins on the left wing. The attacker took a strong touch towards goal before firing a cross across the face of goal for Patterson to tap home. Don’t let the grey hair fool you, the old Scot can still make darting runs into the box when he sniffs out a chance like that. 2-2, and the momentum was firmly with the away side.
So much so, that they lead 3-2 a further four minutes after equalising, this time through Curtis Nelson. Substitute Crowley found himself in a bit of space on the corner of the box and clipped a gorgeous ball over to the far side. If you want anyone stood under that pass, it’s Curtis Nelson. The experienced centre half nodded home his first of the season, and third for the Dons since joining in January, to give his side a most improbable lead and put them in pole position to finally claim their first win of the campaign.
Wycombe manager Michael Duff was extremely level-headed as his side capitulated and threw away a 2-0 lead in eight minutes, as you can imagine. Honestly, from the man who told his players they’d all wasted a year of their lives following a mediocre season last time out, it did end up being fairly tame. He described the way they conceded all three goals as “terrible”, attributed them all to individual error, and went on a rant about his players refusing to listen to him. It’s a good job that every goal conceded in this game was down to one man’s mistake, otherwise people might start to blame the men that coach them!
The heart of Duff’s frustration was his insistence that his team play the ball through the MK Dons press, as this is how he felt they created their best stuff in the first half. They came out after the break and started “booting it around” instead and, according to Duff, if you “go off-script, that’s what happens”. It just comes across as Duff absolving himself of all blame and feigning ignorance to the fact that the opposition team exist and won’t just be played through because you want them to. Duff claimed he had no idea as to why “for some reason” his players resorted to playing the ball long and reverted to basics. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the fact that a very good League One team had just had the half-time battering of their careers and were pressing the life out of Wycombe for the opening stages of the second half. No, that just can’t be right. Why can’t League One Wycombe Wanderers just bypass the opposition entirely like Barcelona? The mind boggles. Luckily for the Wycombe players, Duff did concede that he thinks their disobedience is coming from a good place and that they want to win. Isn’t that sweet?
At 3-2 down, Wycombe suddenly switched back to playing the ball short and passing through MK Dons. Duff seems to think it’s a mentality issue and that they find it much easier to play without pressure when they’re losing. As much as this is at least partially true, it could also be due to the fact that Paul Warne’s side had now taken the lead and were happy to sit in and soak up pressure once more. We’ll never know.
One man that did have the Wanderers’ boss purring was new signing Jayden Wareham. Wareham scored 19 League One goals for relegated Exeter last time out, and had been linked with a move to every decent third tier side all summer. Finally, at the last minute, it was Wycombe who made their move to sign the centre forward, who started from the off for his debut this weekend. Duff praised his new front man for his busy and industrious play, highlighting his ability to occupy centre halves that are much bigger in size than little Jayden Wareham. He’s an archetypal Duff striker, hard-working and comfortable without the ball while also being able to finish half-chances on the occasion that they’re presented to him.
Wycombe had one shot on target in the second half, it fell to Wareham, he scored. It’s that simple. Silko Thomas found himself with the ball down the left-hand side with two MK Dons defenders in front of him. Fortunately, neither decided to press him, leaving him with ample time to whip in a cross for Wareham to poke home to bring the score to 3-3. Neither team seemed to fancy having a go at defending at Adams Park this weekend, which made for frustrating viewing for the fans but a great watch for us neutrals. I think football would be better if every team defended in a way that made their managers’ blood pressure spike to near medical emergency levels.
The rest of the game was frantic and lacked any real quality, both sides throwing caution and game plans to the wind in search of a dramatic late winner to add the cherry atop a cake that was already smothered in icing. It wasn’t to be, and both Wycombe and MK Dons are still searching for their first league wins of the season. Every great story ends with absolutely nobody happy with the result. Both threw away leads, both remain winless, both sets of players had their heads chewed clean off of their shoulders by their managers. Misery balanced in perfect equilibrium.
We’re 5 games in now, but it still feels harsh to judge either side on what we’ve seen so far. They’ve both faced tricky opening run-ins and, other than MK’s tragic loss in Wigan and Wycombe being turned over by Stockport, have been competitive in difficult fixtures that they may even have won on another day. I know it’s easy for me to say, but they just need to stop leaking so many goals. It doesn’t matter how many your wonderful attackers can put away if you’re leaking just as many at the other end. MK Dons and Wycombe both came into the season as outside shots for play-off positions, MK due to their spending and Paul Warne’s League One record, and Wycombe due to their historical performances and the strength of their manager. It’s not over until it’s over, but on the balance of play so far I’d say it’s pretty unlikely that either of these sides make a push for the top six without a serious tactical autopsy to fix their problems at the source. If anyone can do it, it’s Duff and Warne.