A look at the Chairboys

League One is littered with clubs who have fallen from the grace of Premier League membership over the last 30 years — Wycombe in beechy Bucks are one of the exceptions to that rule.   Historically, High Wycombe was a home to the furniture industry, hence their nickname.  The setting of their ground, albeit reached through a trading estate, is impressively rural.

They were only promoted to the Football League for the first time in 1993 and have spent the majority of the time since flitting between the third and fourth tiers, before reaching the Championship for the first time in 2020-21.

The average attendance for their home games at 10,000-capacity Adams Park this season is under 6,000. The gap in resources compared to Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday, who will contest the division’s other play-off semi-final, is more like a chasm.

American businessman and lawyer Rob Couhig completed a takeover of the club from the supporters’ trust in February 2020 and travels from New Orleans once a month for a week at Adams Park. He has armed manager Gareth Ainsworth with the tools to challenge for the second tier.

“We expect to be in the Championship,” Couhig told the Bucks Free Press in January. “We have re-done the training ground from the bottom up and we’ve now got a training facility that is as good as anyone’s in the Championship. We’re part of building something that has never existed and I love it.”

“I reject terms such as ‘massive club’ or ‘little club’ because, to me, our players are just as good or even better than anybody else. Ultimately, our job in the ownership is to support the ability to pay for quality players and, if you look at it, I think people get misled due to the size of the stadium.”