2024... What a year!
A year that started with many (myself included) calling for Bloomfield's job, ends with us having the 6th best record across the whole 92 in 2024. (https://www.experimental361.com/p/2024-table-premier-league-and-efl)
Before we get too embroiled in the stress of the January transfer window, what have been your highlights of 2024?
1
Comments
(If the link above does not work!)
Stockport 0-5 Wycombe is my highlight. What a night that was
The emergence of Richard Kone and going to matches expecting to win has been nice.
The Stockport game definitely the highlight that comes to mind.
The on-pitch performances have been superb, and the emergence of Matt Bloomfield as a well-regarded and in-demand young manager is both thoroughly deserved and heart warming.
However, I remain sceptical about the off-the-pitch ownership change. We are in real danger of becoming an academy with a football club attached, and potentially losing some of what makes being a Wycombe fan special.
I was just going to post that table myself.
I might be paraphrasing (I turn 50 in 2025 and my memory is failing me daily) but I’m sure Matt Bloomfield has said one of his aims and objectives as manager of Wycombe Wanderers is to make supporters proud.
I think it would be fair to see he has successfully met those aims and objectives and then some.
Turning it around, as a supporter, I am incredibly proud to have Matt Bloomfield as our manager. I was equally proud to have Matt Bloomfield as our player.
For more than two decades now he has led by example and represented the very best of us.
👏
How would producing our own talent make the club less special?
A highlight has to be the game where Morley and Humphreys appeared. We looked out of sorts, out of ideas and second best. Then immediately a couple of slick passes and a bit of chasing has us on our feet followed closely by a great goal, a whole new system and people wondering how we possibly got them signed up. A new dawn isn't too over dramatic.
Producing "our own talent" wouldn't make the club less special, but I'm not convinced that is the purpose of the academy investment. I think the purpose is producing talent that can be sold for big money to other clubs. I don't think many of the players coming out of the academy will stick around in our own team for long, if at all, before being sold on, leading to somewhat of a lack of continuity and team spirit.
Well no, most of them wouldn't stick around - that's the same at any club. But it's a big money generator that could be absolutely transformative for us if done right.
Future academy talent won't stick around because they'll be heading back to Kazakhstan.
It’s been answered already but because the size and quality of the academy proposals are disproportionate to the club.
I’m all for having a youth development function at the club which supports the football team, but not for the main purpose of the club to be an academy.
Our best players have always been nicked by bigger clubs for beans, if we can produce better players more often, generate some useful cash by a combination of sales and keeping a billionaire interested in a project then we can at least keep ticking over and potentially have outings in the championship. Whichever way you carve it up it's a better model than owing money all over town and getting the buckets out to fund the signing of other people's cast offs. That was great from all involved but can't be relied on forever.
If we can get through 5 or 6 years, maybe get a new roof or two out of ML and maybe one dip into the championship where we can actually attend games before the academy is spun off or wound up then great, if it actually becomes sustainable then brilliant.
The trust had spent all the money they could get their hands on, the Couhigs most likely the same, that's how investment works at this level, would people be happier with a plucky ex player being owner giving Blooms all the money he can for a year or two with no questions asked? Probably, but then when he is skint and we are screwed again less so.
The ultimate aim is to have a cat 1 academy, which suggests that the ultimate aim is also to get the club into the Premier League. It sounds ridiculous, but I'm sure it sounded just as ridiculous to fans of Bournemouth, Wigan etc (hopefully we don't do a Wigan). Life is too short not to dream a bit - I'm excited to see where this project takes us.
So invest in a Category 1 Academy once the club is at a level that requires and can sustain it.
There's no real evidence that "the club" is funding the academy or any increased spending on the pitch out of income which we've been told for years is too low to fund itself.
Let's be honest, it's his money, if "the academy project" is the hook to bring him in then it's up to him in which order he spends it.
That will take years to achieve, hence we're laying the groundwork now. This interview set it out well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eNu8ATK5Go
I remain cautiously optimistic, such is the nature of modern football and ownership. As a club, Wycombe has fought against the tide of modern football for a long, long time. We’ve done things our own way, with GA’s rag-tag/rock ‘n’ roll football style, Trust ownership, and even the Couhig brand of ownership a complete anomaly compared to many others. The direction being set will transform the club and it will no longer be so parochial or remain under the radar. Whether that changes how I personally feel about the club and my role as a fan, I’m not sure yet. I’m a sentimental sort and probably a glass-half empty person naturally averse to change. But there are plenty of reasons to be excited.
In terms of this calendar year, the transformation and turnaround orchestrated by MB and his team has been sensational. I couldn’t be happier for him and I hope at the very least that he is the one in control of his managerial destiny, wherever that might lie in future.
No more ridiculous than me reading that the new President of Georgia is an ex Man City player and wondering if that could somehow affect WWFC,
It has been a truly transformative year for the club.
We have seen Matt Bloomfield go from a large percentage of fans calling for his head to being loved pretty much by all & being mentioned as a possibility for every L1/Championship managerial vacancy.
The style of football & squad have been upgraded to something that we would all like to watch every Saturday & any other day we play.
Lomtadze & his team have come in & that is instrumental in where we are & where we might end up.
Off the field we have seen the move from Marlow to Harlington with the impact this has had on training, training injuries etc. as well as the changes to the recruitment, data analysis & medical/sports science teams.
We have also seen huge strides being taken in creating an Academy structure to support the ambitions of the ownership group, but also to support the club both in terms of player development as well as financially.
So far all of this has been achieved whilst still hanging on to the core values & ethos of the club which is phenomenal - long may it carry on; because we are different, we do things our way, we are the Chairboys.
If the income from the Academy keeps us at a Championhip/Higher League 1 level and finanially sustainable, i would be more than happy.
We've had an owner who wanted us to bankroll a rugby stadium, a Trust which struggled and almost saw us out of business and an owner who steadied the ship and managed to get us Championship and now an absent owner who seems to be funding the team and the Academy that everyone was unhappy about us losing.
Not sure who the perfect owner would be.
How many local Chair magnates with bottomless funds are there?
Yes, the flip side of all of this new American money is that we need a rich owner to even survive. The most telling quote I have seen about the rising tide of money is from the Shrewsbury forum (I think around the time GA joined) saying something along the lines of "We did not regress - we were overtaken by money." I suspect that the new reality is having a filthy rich owner one way or another, so it's good we have a head start on some EFL clubs who have not found theirs yet!
There is definitely a wistfulness, as one more piece of the past is dying. It does feel as though we'll all be managed by AIBots in 2034, with players getting small electric shocks if they stray from set patterns of play.
Perfect words from two Gasroom stalwarts who completely get how professional football works.
I'd settle for a fridge magnate
Honourable mention as well for Mooneyman’s succinct summary.
No team at any level seems to be safe from the possibility of being right royally screwed over. The only thing we have in our favour over the Prem and big Championship clubs, in my opinion, is that with 5,000 regulars (or so) you cannot afford to lose a few thousand safe in the knowledge there are thousands queuing up to replace them.
There won't be players.
You'll have actual robots playing the games, saving massively on wages and fees.
But then hunt begins for who has the best scientists and buildy type people.
If it got to that stage, they wouldn't need to have physical robots kicking a ball on a grass pitch.
The whole thing could be played in a virtual CGI environment on-screen, with access to viewing only available to Sky subscribers. There would be no need for managers, each side's tactics would be determined by a computer algorithm, so that the chief programmer would be the highest paid person.
Meanwhile, AP could then be sold off to a retail consortium, who would turn it into a retail park, with Costa, Dunelm, and a McDonalds on site, because we haven't got enough of those in Wycombe.
There won't be any need for shops
We'll all be living on Mars
The ultimate VPN