Wycombe Wanderers boss Gareth Ainsworth criticised his side's first half display as he saw his side surprisingly lose 4-2 to struggling Morecambe at Adams Park on Saturday.

Morecambe raced into a three-goal lead before the break, adding a fourth five minutes into the second half.

The Blues staged a late fightback thanks to goals from Nick Freeman and Luke O'Nien but the visitors held on stoutly to record an excellent win.

Ainsworth said: "It was a shock to me, but not as big as you think as this league is tighter than people think.

"You look at some of the other results [from Saturday] and you will know what I am talking about.

"Sometimes you aren't just good enough on the day. There isn't a rhyme or reason to it because we set-up the same team, we train the same, we do the same things.

"You ask them to go out and do the same things but sometimes the other team are better and that's football.

"We were rubbish first half. We weren't at the races at all. We gave it a go in the second half but we had a huge mountain to climb but I will be doing my utmost to put it right for Tuesday.

"People looked off it. There were individual errors and team errors. Morecambe came with a nothing to lose attitude and they played really well.

"I had a go at them at half-time but you don't want to destroy your players as they had another 45 minutes to put it right.

"I thought Morecambe's fourth goal was very poor and maybe if we stop that we have a chance of coming back to 3-3 but you can't be conceding sloppy goals like that and expecting to get anything out of the game.

"We will work really hard now on what went wrong and we have a quick turnaround. As a player I always wanted the next game to come round quickly after a loss and we have that on Tuesday now [against Coventry]."

Despite the heavy defeat, Ainsworth was pleased his substitutes, especially Freeman, had a positive impact on the game.

He added: "I was pleased with a couple of performances, especially off the bench.

"I thought Tys and Nick did well as well as Curtis Thompson but it was too late and we threw it away in the first half. As a manager you sometimes just say let's put it right."