Wycombe manager Gareth Ainsworth admits that his first two seasons in management were a “whirlwind” and that they prompted him to implement a recruitment policy last summer.

The 41-year-old is into his third year as Wanderers manager but finally feels he has a squad that he can be judged on.

After taking the reins from Gary Waddock in 2012, Ainsworth was stuck with players on the club’s books who he had not signed and it took him until the past summer to rid the squad of the remnants from previous regimes. Alongside his coaches Ainsworth defined a clear idea of what he wanted from any new recruits arriving at Adams Park.

He said: “We had a meeting between me and the staff and we decided what type of players we needed, but when you say type you cover position, you cover size, you cover speed, you cover fitness, you cover utility, you cover character, you cover ups and downs.

“Do they get on with the team? Do they fit in a team environment? Will they fit in a small squad environment? Are they a bad player out of the team? Are they a good player in the team? All these things come into it so that when you try and profile someone it isn’t ‘he looks a decent player so let’s get him’.

“We go way deeper and that will sometimes mean hours and hours on the phone talking to people, digging, trying to find out what we can. I’ve got a good staff in Barry (Richardson) and Dobbo (Richard Dobson), that know a lot of people, David Wates ,who knows a lot of people in football as well, and we all talk to people and trust people’s opinions on people - trawling through things and histories about players.

“You can’t just see someone doing well on the pitch and think ‘yeah, I’ll sign him’. It doesn’t work like that. We make sure that they’re here for the long term – not just one season wonders that when they’re not in the team they spit their dummy out.

“You’ve got to be for the club in or out of the team. You’ve got to want us to win if you’re in the starting XI, on the bench or in the stand. You have to want Wycombe to win otherwise you’re no good to me.”

Having one of the smallest squads and budgets in League Two means Ainsworth cannot afford to make mistakes when bringing someone in – a fact he’s well aware of. “You wouldn’t employ anyone who’s got a dodgy record and I think we’ve got to do it in football, especially when you can only employ a limited number of players,” he said.

“If I could get 40 players maybe I could make five or ten mistakes and think ‘right, that didn’t work put him on the scrapheap and let’s go again’ but I can’t do that.

“There is no scrapheap at Wycombe Wanderers and I can’t envisage there ever being because every player is very, very important to me whether they’ve played one minute this season or played every game this season.

“There’s no hierarchy in the players. They’re all just as important as each other and that’s the way it should be in my opinion.”