GARETH Ainsworth said his young players were guilty of panicking against Bury, as naive defending cost them in a 2-1 loss.

Wanderers took a first half lead through Anthony Stewart before the struggling visitors hit back to win with goals either side of the first red card of Matt Bloomfield’s career.

Although Ainsworth said he wouldn’t swap any of his players for anyone else in League Two, he had no complaints at the result as Wanderers suffered a third home defeat of the season – and said it wasn’t down to the fourth red card of the campaign that they were beaten.

The Blues boss said: “The sending off didn’t help but it wasn’t the reason, believe me, there were other mistakes apart from the sending off. We got what we deserved in the second half, a defeat.

“The game didn’t hinge on that. We defended - and played – badly as a whole second half. We had a couple of chances and started very brightly. To win the game and put it to bed you have to take those.

“In my opinion we’re better than that. We are young and it’s not an excuse but we are going to make mistakes and sometimes it’s going to look very naive. We’ve got to front people up quicker, we’ve got to put pressure on the ball quicker.

“We panicked a little bit instead of keeping the calm heads, and that’s young kids for you. When we’re 18 and something’s against us, we haven’t experienced it before and that’s when you panic a little bit. The older heads have had this before and know how to handle it. But I wouldn’t swap any of them for anyone.”

Wanderers had won their previous three matches and were level at 1-1 on Tuesday before the match was abandoned at half time.

Charles Dunne coming in for Sam Wood after the first two of those games has been the only change, with the remaining ten members of the team staying the same – a fact Ainsworth was keen to reiterate.

He said: “I think that’s the picture people have got to look at, the last four games and not just today. That team has had three victories and a defeat – I’ll probably take that pattern from now until the end of the season, I think any manager would.”

Reflecting on the game Ainsworth added: “We were the better team first half but we defended poorly second half. We took an onslaught from Bury and we didn’t handle it well. We didn’t play the right attacking football.

“I thought the two wide men for Bury caused us too many problems today. I thought we let them get the ball too easily and we allowed them in our box. It was simple chopping us up in the box, it wasn’t miracle skill or anything. The goals probably were avoidable.”

When asked about the red card, for a Bloomfield foul on Shaun Beeley, Ainsworth said: “I think Blooms has tried to pull out of it. The referee’s said he’s out of control and reckless, but I know Matt Bloomfield and the referee doesn’t and that’s the difference. The referee’s got to call it how he sees it. We all know Blooms and he’s never been sent off in his career. He’ll be upset for that.”