Wycombe Wanderers boss Matt Bloomfield has heaped praise onto striker D’Mani Mellor following his performance in the club’s 2-1 friendly win over Aldershot Town.

The former Manchester United youth player scored a brilliant goal in the victory against the Shots on July 22, which was his second strike of the pre-season.

His first was in the 1-0 win versus the Arsenal U21s on July 14 at London Colney.

Mellor, who joined Wanderers 12 months ago, bagged one competitive goal in 12 games before moving on loan to Rochdale for the latter half of the season, where he failed to score in any of his 19 appearances.

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On the 22-year-old, Bloomfield said: “D’Mani did really well and I love him as a lad.

“He works hard every single day and even though he was unfortunate to get relegated with Rochdale, he’s taken a lot from that and his development has been good.

“As I said before, he’s a lovely lad who always has a smile and wants to do well.

“I was really impressed with D’Mani who played really well.

“He linked up well with Garath [McCleary] who played in a slightly different role than what we’ve seen in the last couple of years, but we’re trying to utilising him as much as we can in the attacking areas.”

The manager was also impressed with the performance of Jack Young.

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The 22-year-old only featured in seven games during the course of the 2022/23 season, but looked assured when coming on as a second-half substitute against the National League club.

Bloomfield added: “We’ve got more minutes for Luke [Leahy] and Kian [Breckin] in the midfield and the back three played really well as Kane Vincent-Young played well too.

“I also think Jack has had a great pre-season and fair play to him.

“He’s working really hard during the summer and he’s come back in great shape.

“I’m pleased with how he’s been.”

Finally, on the performance itself, which saw Mellor and a trialist get on the scoresheet, the 39-year-old concluded: “It was a very good game in slightly testing circumstances due to the rain and the slippery surface, but this helped with the way we passed the ball, especially in the first-half.

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“The game changed a bit in the second half when we made so many changes as we had several trialists, but there were plenty of positives to take.

“Usually in pre-season, you play games on nice pitches in nice, sunny weather so something like this was a good test for us to make sure we’re ready.

“Aldershot were very good as they put in a good test and I’m glad with the amount of minutes we put into the lads.”