Gareth Ainsworth was in no mood to dwell on missing out on automatic promotion by just a single point after victory against Northampton, and the Wycombe boss has already set his sights on taking his team to Wembley.

Alfie Mawson swept home a delightful winner with the last kick of the game to see off the Cobblers, but it wasn’t enough to see Blues climb into the top three as Bury, who started the day fourth, beat Tranmere.

The defender’s 97th minute goal meant Wycombe leapfrogged Southend into fourth, earning them a tie against Plymouth rather than Stevenage.

“We wanted to win the game today,” said Ainsworth. “We’re in the ascendency, we’ve got an away win under our belt, it’s not an easy place to come and we can take that with us into next week.

“I’m looking forward to it. It’s great for the club. It probably helps the finances more than nicking third place, although if you’d have asked me I’d rather have gone up in third place.

“We’ve got this now and it’s a great opportunity to upset the form books and achieve something this year.”

For a brief spell in the second half Wanderers fans dared to dream as Morecambe, who had beaten Blues seven days previously, built up a 3-1 lead against Southend.

That result, coupled with Tranmere holding Bury to a goalless draw, would have been enough to see the Chairboys take third spot in League Two, but after the Shakers scored they went on to take the final automatic promotion spot.

The Wycombe bench were well aware of score elsewhere, as Ainsworth explained: “I knew what was going on and I knew for 20 minutes that we were in third place, and rightly so with 84 points.

“I don’t think for many a year that 84 points hasn’t been good enough to get promoted. It’s fantastic to win a game, you always want to win and we won today but we’ve ended up in the play-offs.

“If you’d have said that a year ago people wouldn’t have believed you.”

Wanderers’ final points tally would have been enough to see them promoted automatically in each of the last five seasons and would have seen them go up as champions in the 2012/13 campaign.

Despite the stats Ainsworth did not want to look at it as a negative and instead believes his side can approach the play-offs with confidence on the back of a stellar season.

He said: “I think it shows how strong we are – to get as many points as we have. There’s five teams that have really gone to town in the league this season and to be one of those is brilliant.

“Eighty-four points is a magnificent tally for a team that has really been up against it all year. We’ve got two, maybe three more games to go and I’ll make sure everyone is fit and ready.

“We’ve got players coming back, we’ve got players returning to fitness, we’ll be strong in the next two games but so will Plymouth Argyle, make no bones about that. We know we’ll be in for a tough challenge and we’ll need a bit of luck to help us overcome that.”