MANAGER Brian Little was rather caught between a rock and a hard place, as he saw his team produce a massively improved second half display against Wycombe Wanderers to come within an ace of reaping some reward, but was more than a little disappointed by some poor mistakes during the first 45 minutes at Adams Park.

"For every bit as good as we were in the second half, we were twice as bad in the first," he said.

"It's a hard one for me to call, as that was a poor as we have been in a long time. Yes, we have had some games when we haven't played overly well, but I have not had a game where I think we could have worked harder, looked brighter and got amongst them.

"I'm not looking for excuses, but I think another 24 hours would have been nice for us to prepare for this game. And it looked like we needed a little bit of a runaround to get things going.

"That's about the only thing I can bring up if I'm looking for excuses, which I'm not.

"We needed to shake things up at half time, we needed to be brave and try something different.

"Both Richard and Phil had been booked, and I didn't want a sending off, so that gave me license to try something different.

"I put young Neil [Taylor] in midfield, which is somewhere he has not played for me before, while Gaz has comeback from a loan spell with Tamworth and been suspended for four games, but we throw them in, to a more 4-4-2.

"Sam also did well coming in on the left hand side, so all in all the second half performance was good and overall I think we were a unlucky not to have got a point in the end.

"Indeed, I think we were very unlucky, their goalkeeper has pulled off a good save to deny Michael [Proctor], while he also had that chance with the header, although it was difficult.

"There was another one from Hally which somehow spun over the bar, so we have had enough chances and certainly had them worried in the second half.

"We were pleased with that and a point would have been a massive one for us, but it hasn't happened and we are a bit gutted.

"I think our fans saw us at least react and try to roll our sleeves up and got stuck in - which is important.

"But the bottom line from our point of view is that we can't afford another 45 minutes like in our position. It was a horrible half to sit and watch, and we couldn't have given two worse goals away.

"As good as Gavin was on Sunday he has made a couple of mistakes tonight. He's kicked straight to young Leon Knight, who is the last person in the world you want to give a one-on-one with on the edge of the box. Then his second kick wasn't a good kick either!

"Now he is a good kicker, but maybe in these conditions, a kick out of his hands would have been the better option. Hey, we all make mistakes, I've made a million over the years and I'm still making them.

"So we have to dig deep, the players are disappointed, but they know they have reacted properly in the second half.

"We might have poor performances from time to time, but we can't have lack luster, almost effortless - alright effortless is over the top, but we just weren't there in the first half.

"They battered us in the first half, but in the second we have pretty much done the same to them, with their keeper pulling off a couple of really good saves.

"We said to the players at half time, 'Look, sit down, there a couple of brave decisions going on here.'

"Although when Jeff came off, that scuppered me a little bit, because I would really have only liked to have changed two, not the three, as we saw at Chester on Sunday, bringing on all three subs can leave you without cover when someone gets injured, but we had to do something.

"I'm not shy of trying something else when things are not going right and it nearly worked today!

"If we had got a point tonight, then that would have been brilliant, but at the end we are a point behind where we would have liked to have been tonight.

"We have plenty of big games coming up and while we are disappointed not to have taken a point tonight, had we managed to grab a second goal, then you never know, we might have been on the road to winning.

"They were hanging on for dear life in the second half, so we are not far wrong, but it's always disappointing to lose football matches.

"We still have a great deal of fight left in us and we can learn one or two things from tonight. The nice thing was that they tried to respond as a group to what we did at half time and in the end we were unlucky."