Wycombe Wanderers and Cardiff City played out a hard-fought 1-1 draw on New Year’s Day, with both managers reflecting on contrasting emotions after the final whistle.
Michael Duff, Wycombe’s boss, praised his side’s resilience following a heavy defeat just days earlier.
“I was proud of the boys’ performance. All I could do was ask for them to give everything, which they did,” he said. “It’s a really valuable point against the league leaders. The difference from losing 4-0 to Luton on Boxing Day to today is night and day.”
Duff admitted his team started slowly but adapted well:
“We wanted to be aggressive but lost too many duels, so we changed things. Now we need to show the same application and desire against Wimbledon and add quality and play more quickly.”
For Brian Barry-Murphy, Cardiff’s head coach, there was frustration despite a strong display:
“We always want to win all of the games we go into. The players are human. While we've been so dominant and created so many good chances, chances we'd normally take, today we just couldn't. I'm very pleased with large parts of the performance again.
“We went to Lincoln and Bolton and places like that and produced what we thought were okay performances but didn't create enough chances. Today we produced a lot of chances.
“Some of our play was exhilarating at times. Wycombe are a very good team, especially at home, and we were fully aware of that.
"How we started the game was exactly how I visualised it. We were on the front foot the whole game and I can't really ask for more than that, apart from the goals we feel we deserved.”
