Wycombe Wanderers’ chairman Dane Rice has revealed that bringing in young players is at the ‘forefront’ of the club’s identity following the recent takeover.

The 38-year-old, along with the director Eduard Vyshnyakov and owner Mikheil Lomtadze, arrived at the club at the start of May where they purchased the Couhig family’s 90 per cent share.

This ended the American’s five-year stint in charge of the Adams Park side.

Now, Lomtadze who is from Georgia but is based in Kazakhstan, hopes to introduce an academy to nurture untouched talent to help Wycombe secure Championship football.

The Chairboys have been without an academy since 2012 but launched a development squad in 2020.

Rice told Wanderers TV: “We want to be at the forefront of bringing in young players through our programme, and we want to attract young players to our club.

“We also want to make sure that there is a feel in the community within the local sector that they know young players get an opportunity here.

“The community has a stronghold within the club, so to make sure we’re bringing our own through, and having players in our first team they’ve seen in the local community will be huge for us.

“We hope that our aspirations are in line with everyone else’s at the club, and we want young players in our first team, but we know that this will take time.

“Within year one, we hope to build a mechanism to propel us forward so year one will be a development year for us.

“We then hope to build on from that.

“We are going to build everything that we feel is right for the club in the long term, but whether it’s for the academy or the first team, it will take time.

“I’ve experienced it from a different side where I’ve come in to understand it, smelling it and seeing it.

“So I’m certainly looking forward to hopefully seeing the hard work behind the scenes which everyone is involved in, and we can get that first game underway.”