Why Wycombe are chairing League One (for now)
12/02/2024 09:58 AM
Perhaps it says something about the landscape of Sky Bet
League One that it took a run of ten consecutive wins for people to really sit
up and take notice of Wycombe Wanderers — a club, after all, owned by a
Georgian billionaire, with a bright, young, English manager in Matt Bloomfield
and, in Richard Kone, a free-scoring striker whose journey could be turned into
a movie one day.
Such is life, though, for clubs in the orbit of Wrexham and
Birmingham City, whose celebrity patrons and lavish spending cast a long shadow
over England's third tier these days.
Wycombe, however, have registered more wins, collected more
points and scored more goals than any team in the country — and, with a third
of the season gone, they have a four-point cushion at the top. An 11th win
in a row arrived at Wealdstone on Saturday, which put them in the hat for the
FA Cup third-round draw on Monday night.
Wycombe, who spent a season in the Sky Bet Championship in
2020-21, have long relished their underdog status, of course, but that standing
is likely to be tested if Mikhail Lomtadze's goal of taking the club into the
Premier League one day is backed up with action.
Lomtadze, a former private equity investor and Harvard
Business School graduate who is based in Kazakhstan, is the chief executive of
Kaspi, a banking, payment and marketplace super app used by more than half of
Kazakhstan's 20 million population and is making moves throughout central Asia.
He is yet to visit Adams Park since completing a takeover in
May but he is the real deal: Forbes puts his fortune at $5.8billion.
Wycombe's trajectory, however, is not simply the result of
their new-found wealth. Momentum on the pitch has been building since the turn
of the year. There has been no spending spree in the transfer market.
Bloomfield, while handed an increased budget in the summer, is still working
with what is understood to be the ninth-highest wage bill in the division.
In June, Wycombe signed a long-term lease for the use of a
new training ground in Harlington, west London, formerly home to Queens Park
Rangers and, before that, Chelsea. A sum of £1million was spent on upgrading
training pitches, while the gymnasium and changing rooms have been refurbished
and there are plans for a new indoor playing surface.
The new training base comes with the benefit of shifting
Wycombe's academy catchment area into the densely populated capital, where the
club plan to scout for young and perhaps overlooked talent. Last month's talent
ID day began a process that will result in the formation of an under-18s team
by the end of the season, the first staging post in a journey towards Category
One status.
Dan Rice, who has worked in recruitment for Fulham, Arsenal,
Southampton and Everton, made no secret of the club's ambitions after his
appointment as chief football officer and interim chairman in the summer. "The
medium-term goal is to be back in the Championship, be sustained in the
Championship, and long-term is the Premier League. We're not going to hide
that," he said.
