Matt Bloomfield described himself as a “manager full of pride” after seeing his 10-man Wycombe side hold on for a 3-2 win over Bristol Rovers.
It was a much-needed first win in 13 League One games for the Chairboys, but they had to survive the sending-off of midfielder Josh Scowen for a dangerous tackle on Sam Finley and then a late Rovers recovery.
Bloomfield said: “It was incident-packed, wasn’t it?
“We’ve obviously had a testing week, but I’m so proud of the way the boys reacted today, to go and put that performance in at home and give the fans plenty to cheer about.
“The atmosphere under the lights here is always special and I’m a manager full of pride at this moment.
“I actually thought the ref had given a foul in Josh’s favour (for the red card) because Josh got the ball and then there was the collision.
“It was on the blindside, so I couldn’t see, and I saw the blood afterwards and then I genuinely didn’t realise he was going to give a red because I thought the player had put his head down.
“As we all saw, Josh got the ball and played the ball forward, there wasn’t any studs up, so that was surprising for me.”
Wycombe were dominating the game following Ryan Tafazolli’s 29th-minute opener before losing Scowen to a straight red card.
Despite being down to 10 men, the Chairboys doubled their lead when Sam Vokes bundled in from Tafazolli’s knock-down before Luke Leahy seemingly put the game to bed by adding a third.
In an extraordinary finish, however, Chris Martin pulled back two goals for Rovers in stoppage time before Jevani Brown shot just wide with the final kick.
Despite the late fightback, Rovers boss Matt Taylor said: “That’s the most frustrated and disappointed I’ve been in the manner of the performance for 55 minutes of that game.
“I’ve just said to the players, people will think we’re soft physically, but we were soft with the ball, we were soft with our running, we were soft with our mindset, soft with our team spirit.
“We never got any control in that game and then the sending-off happened and we looked like we were in control all of a sudden because we could find an extra pass and move the ball.
“And then, as has been this reoccurring pattern, we make two incredible decisions and don’t see out the danger and don’t defend our box.
“It was a little bit false off the back of the sending-off and we were really disappointed with that first 55 minutes of the game.”
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