Best Of

WYCOMBE BOSS SACKED AFTER ONE LEAGUE GAME

Mike Dodds was let go by Wycombe today after he played a team consisting almost entirely of Matt Bloomfield and Scott Mitchell players. Not only that, but after the final whistle he removed his tracksuit to reveal a t-shirt with the slogan 'Data can do one'.

"We had thought that we were in alignment with our corporate ethos and synergistic strategies" said Dan Rice, sadly. "Our data had pointed to wasting money on Danish punts very specific players to take us from a team who could challenge Birmingham at the top to a...er...team who may be able to stay ahead of Wrexham. For Dodds to come in and play mostly personnel from the previous manager is remarkably deflating."

Although it seems a bit odd I wonder if we're basically saying the squad has got us to second on merit and that the incoming players therefore need to demonstrably improve specific features of the team during training in order to be selected on match day. Unless there is a measurable upgrade on offer we stick with the players currently in the side.

I think that's a sensible approach. If 4 or 5 new players were in the starting 11 you might begin to worry about it disrupting harmony with the pre-existing squad.

Signing so many players that are not match fit as opposed to signing players to make an immediate threat to the existing players is a strange way to go.

Lowry was decent last week. Not even the squad. We signed Berry injured? How do you get a player through a medical? After a somewhat stale performance v Cambridge I was hoping for a boost.

Absolutely

Perhaps Dodds doesn’t fancy Rice’s Danish signings.

You just have to hope that in such a fantastic season, some of the seemingly "interesting" decisions we're making don't derail it.

How is he going to manage what I make 25 first teamers who will all look to be in and around it?

2-3 are injured, perhaps 3-4 aren't "fit", but what happens when we have 20+ all ready in March?

Very interesting, but still better than the days we had to have 15 players running on empty all season as there was literally no other choices!

This exactly. I don't think we can just say they're "not fit" as an alibi for the rest of the season.

These are guys in their mid 20s, who have been with us 5-6 weeks now. Yes they need to get up to speed / match fit etc, but presumably they haven't been sat on a beach for 3months doing nothing eating biscuits.

We're not asking them to play 90mins every game either.

How miserably predictable that we would uncover a gem like Richard Kone and he’d be injured for some of the most important games we’ve ever played.

Apart from that I’d have expected Xavi for Leahy and found a place for Lowry on the bench. Part of me would rather have Gids at right back too.

They are all professional athletes, surely they should all be fit and ready for action ?!

Yes, they've had a couple of little run-outs, but really hard to judge their qualities so far.

Westy (if we can give him that nickname) was in for a tap in if Lubala had seen it one game, but apart from that very little indication of how they're going to fit in.

At least we're covered without them for a while.

I think the disappointment with Westy is that he was signed soon after it was clear Morley wasn't being signed, and for massive money, so we hoped he was the replacement. When he seems a totally different player - from what we've seen so far, which isn't much!