Gareth Ainsworth feels Wycombe are coming into form at the right time

Gareth Ainsworth feels Wycombe are coming into form at the right time after their “best away result of the season” at Cambridge.

Ainsworth’s Chairboys were dominant throughout to ease past the U’s 4-1, adding to their half-time lead – given to them by Sam Vokes – with two goals in three minutes after the break from Vokes and Josh Scowen, before Garath McCleary completed the scoring late on after Harvey Knibbs had pulled a goal back for the hosts.

Cambridge had won successive away games 1-0, but were no match for a Wycombe side who climb into the League One play-off positions.

“The lads were superb,” Ainsworth said. “I thought we attacked really, really well. Some of the play was just super, and the way we defended again.

“We had a couple of messages to give them at half-time to try and deal with (Joe) Ironside, who I think has been one of the most prolific scorers in the league, but we kept him to a minimum.

“I don’t like individualising people, so the whole lot of them were superb tonight. We got the result; I think we could have probably scored a few more goals. We’ve hit the post twice, hit the crossbar. It was brilliant, (with) some really big performances at the right time as well.

“This is the crucial end of the season, the business end of the season. That doesn’t make the season but it’s a nice win to have.

“We’re a good team and I can’t thank the boys enough and the staff enough. They were brilliant tonight.”

Mark Bonner felt his side had been overpowered by Ainsworth’s team as they failed to follow up their impressive victory at Ipswich at the weekend.

Cambridge still sit comfortably, 14 points above the bottom four in League One.

“The reality is that when you play the top teams, and you’ve got to play them back to back so close together, it’s very difficult for us,” Bonner said afterwards.

“We made the worst of starts really because you know the aggression they come out with, and it’s similar to at their place when they got the first goal, but we got ourselves back into control of that and it wasn’t too uncomfortable for large parts of the first half.

“We go in at 1-0 and we’re OK, first few minutes of the second half are OK, then we make a mistake and they punish you and then it’s two goals in quick succession, and then they were absolutely rampant and ripped us apart for a little bit. Too powerful, too athletic, too aggressive.

“It was a really uncomfortable period of 15, 20 minutes. It’s a team full of players who played in the Championship last year so that is what they can do, and we struggled to contain them.”