Wayne Rooney ‘angry’ despite late Derby winner

Derby manager Wayne Rooney was still “angry” with his team’s performance despite Andre Wisdom’s last-gasp goal snatching a 2-1 victory at Wycombe.

The Rams had long spells on the back foot at Adams Park and survived several scares after Uche Ikpeazu’s penalty had cancelled out the Wycombe striker’s earlier own goal.

Nonetheless, Rooney’s side were able to come away with their fifth win in seven games, which moved them six points clear of the Championship relegation zone.

Rooney said: “I’m delighted with the three points, but I’m really disappointed and angry with our performance. It wasn’t good enough tonight.

“We have to perform better, we have to believe in ourselves that we’re a better team than that and we have to play better football than we did tonight.

“It’s a great thing when you don’t play well and you get three points, but I just felt that we have to play better.

“I believe a lot in these players, I believe they’re a good team and we’ve got more quality than maybe they think, so they have to believe in themselves now and they need to believe they can play better football than they did tonight.

“We knew it was going to be a battle – we needed to adapt and hang in there at times, which we did, but I just felt we could make the game a bit easier for ourselves.”

Derby were handed the lead after 16 minutes when Ikpeazu headed Martyn Waghorn’s corner into his own net, but he redeemed himself from the spot after the restart.

Just when it looked as though the Rams would have to settle for a point, Wisdom slammed in a rebound after Waghorn’s free-kick had struck a post in the fourth minute of stoppage time.

Wycombe were denied an opener after Daryl Horgan was wrongly flagged offside and boss Gareth Ainsworth said: “I couldn’t ask for any more today from my players.

“I could have asked for more from a couple of other people, which I won’t get myself in trouble for, but I thought we were outstanding tonight.

“We were really, really good and I will focus now on the positives, not the negatives, because there are too many to mention.

“The officials tonight I didn’t think were good enough at all – and I could go into some major detail because it was terrible.

“I can’t fathom out why things are going so against us. I think we’d be well in this (relegation) fight and not bottom of the league, which is crazy to say, but it really does pain me to say that we deserved a lot more.

“If they actually look into some of the decisions that have gone against us I’ll be astounded, but I’m so proud of the boys.”