SAFETY IS STILL GARETH’S GOAL

GARETH AINSWORTH praised the professionalism of his side, after top beat bottom.

Wycombe were strugglers last season, but knew the dangers of underestimating a Hartlepool battling away at the foot of the table.

And, though they had some scares, Wycombe left with three points, recording a seventh away win – already bettering last season’s haul – and Ainsworth’s message was clear.

“No matter where Hartlepool are, we have to respect them.” he said. “We have been in that situation and turned over the top of the league team.

“We had to do a professional job and this was, forgive the pun, a potential banana skin.

“All clubs will have their moments in the game, and Hartlepool did – Paul Murray will get his team right and they will start winning, we had to make sure it wasn’t against us.

“The timing of the goals was crucial for us, we have scored a lot of goals from different positions and we aren’t relying on one or two.

“This is still a learning curve for us but until we hit the safety target I won’t start talking about other things.

“You have to enjoy days like this.We were struggling last year, we know how hard it can be so we won’t talk of anything else until we are mathematically safe, which hopefully won’t be far away.’’

It’s fair to say the Chairboys don’t have anything to worry about on hitting safety targets this campaign.

However, for the first half there was little between the sides and few incidents of any note.

Pools had a second-minute corner punched off the line by goalkeeper Matthew Ingham, but the Chairboys went ahead on 32 minutes.

Paul Hayes drilled over a cross which was met powerfully by Paris Cowan-Hall, who thumped his header beyond Scott Flinders.

Pools should have been level on half-time, after Marlon Harewood was needlessly felled in the area by Joe Jacobson. Neil Austin took the penalty, but fired high over the bar.

A tame second period came to life as Wycombe finished the game off.

A swift counter-attack led by full-back Sido Jombati saw Hayes roll the ball across goal for Matt Bloomfield to drill in his first of the season. And the third goal came when Jacobson’s corner was met with a towering header by Alfie Mawson.

Marlon Harewood got one back with seven minutes remaining, but it counted for nothing as boss Murray continues to seek his first league win since taking over last month.

He said: “It’s top v bottom and it didn’t look that way at all. It didn’t feel like a 3-1 defeat at all. But they didn’t make many mistakes and we were caught out by individual errors again.

“Wycombe didn’t give us many chances.We got a penalty and at 42 minutes we would have been happy at 1-1. Instead I went in at half-time pretty angry. “Things we work on have fallen on deaf ears this week and it really disappoints me.’’