Wycombe Wanderers’ hopes of achieving play-offs for the second consecutive League One season seems to be well and truly over as they couldn’t hold on to their lead against a fourth-placed Bradford City.
After a couple of months of hope, including a time in which Wanderers sat as high as fifth in the league table when they were leading to Bolton away, Wycombe are now in 11th, five points adrift from Stevenage in sixth with only four games left to play of their 2025/26 campaign.
While different people could have different opinions on what really derailed the season, one thing is certain – the inability to hold a good run of form in the league, whether that’s the away fixtures, or silly mistakes costing valuable points has really cost Wycombe.
Even on Monday, at around 3:07PM when Andre Vidigal slotted his effort into the net to put Wanderers in front, there was hope.
Wycombe were sixth and if it had ended with them stealing the three points, they would’ve finished the day in seventh, only two points off play-offs, and there would still be some glimmer of the dream left.
Even though Stevenage, Plymouth, Huddersfield and Luton have one or two games in hand over the Chairboys, two points is nothing, and all it would take is a slip-up from any of them to make it happen.
But as we all now know, that couldn’t be further from reality.
Many will look back on this season in retrospect and think: Where did it go wrong? But they most likely won’t find one concrete answer.
It went wrong at the start, under a different head coach in Mike Dodds, and all of a sudden Wanderers went from fighting for automatic promotion last year to finding themselves closer to the drop come the start of the current League One campaign.
It went wrong when Richard Kone was sold to Queens Park Rangers, and a replacement who could score consistently was not found.
It went wrong at Reading at home, Exeter at home, Peterborough away, Wimbledon away, Plymouth at home and away, Luton away.
The list goes on, all games in which either individual errors or poor judgement cost Wycombe points. If they hadn’t happened? It would be a very different outlook we have after Monday’s defeat.
The squad is good- we’ve all seen it. Port Vale at home only last week, Cardiff away, Doncaster at home to name a few in which the squad has shown real potential and promise, but the fact that it has not been anywhere near consistent as of recently has made it really difficult to take a positive outlook on what has transpired.
Both Junior Quitirna and Caolan Boyd-Munce came off injured today, joining the list of unavailable alongside Fred Onyedinma, Niall Huggins, Dan Casey and Anders Hagelskjaer, the last two having been most likely the first on the team sheet.
Injuries have been a real thorn in Duff’s side. Again, it’s something we saw last season when Kone was out injured for a while and Wanderers simply didn’t really perform then without their star striker.
All in all, a lack of consistency coupled with some crucial late injuries have been the downfall in Wycombe’s play-off push.
Duff has done a magnificent job with a squad which isn’t his, and it’s clear to see his frustration with some of the current group of players he’s working with. A few reinforcements which suit his system and work ethic will certainly be needed in the summer.
Wanderers will need to overcome that mental barrier which has seemingly haunted them all season, and a full reset in the summer along with some quality additions to compliment the strong spine of the squad will be the perfect tonic to achieve just that.
