BLACKBURN lad Gareth Ainsworth took his Wycombe Wanderers players for a meal on the outskirts of his home town after their trip to Carlisle turned into the journey from hell.

Wycombe play at Carlisle United in League Two on Saturday but their trip north turned into a 10-and-a-half hour endurance test when a tyre blew on their team bus and they also got stuck in traffic.

So Ainsworth took the opportunity to nip back to East Lancashire, booking the whole squad - including former Accrington Stanley duo Joe Jacobson and Peter Murphy - in for an evening meal at Italian restaurant Alghero’s by the M65.

“We had a hell of a day,” Ainsworth said. “We'd set off at 11am so we decided we needed to get something to eat, and being a Blackburn lad I thought I’d take the lads into Blackburn.”

Wycombe are third in League Two after avoiding relegation to the Conference on the last day of last season. Premier League boss Nigel Pearson had a similar brush with disaster when Jimmy Glass saved him from going out of the Football League with Carlisle in 1999.

“It wasn’t an easy situation with the possibility of going out of the Football League but Nigel Pearson came through something similar and has turned into a fantastic manager, so hopefully it is something that will help me further down the line too,” Ainsworth said.

“If we’d been mid-table last season, we’d probably be mid-table against this season.

“But I learned a lot from last season and I made a lot of changes around the club.

"To be third at this stage of the season is fantastic."