Gareth Ainsworth pulled no punches as he saw his side comprehensively beaten 4-2 by Exeter City last night at St James’ Park.

David Wheeler gave the Grecians the lead on 18 minutes after good work by Jack Stacey but Garry Thompson equalised for the visitors on 37 minutes after a great cross from Sam Saunders.

Star man for the home side, Ollie Watkins, with the score at 1-1 and he immediately had an impact as he set up goals for Troy Brown and Joel Grant, within 60 seconds of each other.

Debutant Alex Jakubiak pulled one back on 90 minutes with a smart finish but Watkins wrapped it up as he rounded Jamal Blackman and slammed the ball home in injury time.

Ainsworth gave an honest assessment of his side’s performance after the game. He said: “Exeter deserved to win. Hands up, we weren’t good tonight.

“We didn’t do anything that we have been doing in recent weeks and it was a horrible game and we got beat up a little bit by an Exeter team, who in recent times we have had a lot of success against.

“It was a total contrast to Saturday and we just simply weren’t at it.”

Ainsworth made seven changes from Saturday’s heartbreaking defeat, including changing his defensive duo of Aaron Pierre and Anthony Stewart.

This gave an opportunity for Max Muller and Will De Havilland to play together in the league for the first time and he explained his thoughts behind the changes.

He added: “Aaron and Anthony have played game after game together. We had to rest Anthony for Mansfield as he has been struggling and Saturday took a lot out of both of them.

“We have to look after JJ (Joe Jacobson) too and Bayo and Paul Hayes were carrying knocks so I thought the changes were justified and I don’t want to lose players through injury as we have had that before.

“I wanted to give a bit of freshness to the team and it didn’t work how I hoped and we didn’t create too much.”

One positive for Wycombe was the debut goal for Jakubiak and Ainsworth commented: “He has quite a bit to learn still but he took his goal really well and that was a plus for us.”