Bloomfield 'full of pride' at Wycombe rise to top
Matt Bloomfield replaced long-serving Gareth Ainsworth as Wycombe boss in February 2023
- Published
Wycombe Wanderers boss Matt Bloomfield deflected all the praise towards his players after they won 5-0 at Stockport to go top of League One.
The Chairboys have won their last six games in all competitions and their only defeat in the past 15 matches was by Aston Villa in the Carabao Cup.
Their emphatic win over Stockport put them above Birmingham City on goal difference, with Wrexham four points back in third.
"I'm just the manager who has ideas and has words - but the boys are the ones who have to go and carry it out," Bloomfield told ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Three Counties Radio.
"I'm full of pride. They take on information, they respect tough decisions we have to make and it's not the result, it's the way they go about their work.
"They're a great group of young men who are desperate to do their best for each other and our supporters."
Former midfielder Bloomfield, 40, guided Wycombe to a 10th-placed finish in 2023-24, his first full season in charge, and an appearance in the EFL Trophy final.
The club was subsequently taken over by Kazakhstan billionaire Mikheil Lomtadze and they have shrugged off 3-2 defeats by Wrexham and Birmingham in their opening two league games of the current campaign to win nine of the next 11.
Bloomfield said it was an amazing position to be in "even if it's just for one night".
Two goals by Richard Kone and one from Fred Onyedinma put them in control against Stockport after only 18 minutes.
Onyedinma later added his second before Aaron Morley capped an incredible evening with his first goal for the club.
"I've repeated often enough how we want to entertain, how we want to press from the front, these things are only words if the players don't go and implement them," Bloomfield added.
"We could maybe have had one or two more, looking back at it. There's pride in the performance, but nothing's happened yet, we're 13 games into a long season and we've got an extremely tough game at Wigan at the weekend."
Wycombe had a single season in the Championship in 2020-21 and the closest they have come to a return since was reaching the play-offs the following season, when they lost to Sunderland at Wembley.
"We've picked up a few injuries recently which is going to test the squad," Bloomfield said.
"The reason we recruited the way we did in the summer was because if you look back to this time last year, we lost Luke Leahy, Brandon Hanlan, Freddie Potts and had a tough time for the next couple of months before we were able to rejig it in January.
"We wanted a group that was able to go through the tough winter months and this was a signal that hopefully we have enough strength in depth but we've got a lot more tests to come."