Wycombe Wanderers manager Matt Bloomfield has insisted he wants to take the EFL Trophy ‘seriously’ following the club’s 2-1 victory over the West Ham United U21s.

The Chairboys’ win against the PL2 side means they are in the hat for the quarter-finals, a stage of the competition they have not reached since the 2016/17 season.

That year, they reached the semis before losing to Coventry City, who would go on to win that year’s competition.

However, despite having one eye on the cup run, the boss has insisted that the league is the club’s ‘bread and butter’, as they also aim to get into the top half of the table.

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Speaking after the club win, he said: “There have been some big clubs that you would have expected to have done well in this competition fall, but we need that balance.

“The league is our bread and butter and that’s the thing we need to focus on, but we want to get as far as we can and that’s always been the intention from pre-season.

“We built the squad the way we did so that when it came to cup games, we were able to rotate and go for them.

“It didn’t happen for us in the League Cup or the FA Cup, but we’re in the final eight of this competition and we want to take it seriously.

“We can’t get ahead of ourselves as football has a habit of kicking you where it hurts so we’re taking one game at a time, with our focus now being on Lincoln for Saturday.”

The win over the Hammers side inflicted the academy team their first defeat in 16 matches in all competitions – a run that goes back to August.

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And despite their visit to Adams Park being their first game in nearly a month due to a winter break, they provided a stern test as Franco Ravizzoli in the Wanderers goal had to make some important saves.

Bloomfield continued: “We wanted to win the game and it was an opportunity to rotate the team as we wanted to give some other players minutes.

“If there is any frustration, it would be that we weren’t further ahead and not have that excitement in the last 10 minutes that we seem to create in these games.

“I’m very pleased to get through.

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“We wanted to impose our physicality which we did and we could have been several goals up in no time.

“As the game settled, they got back into it as they have several good players in terms of how they moved the ball.

“But I’m pleased with how we started on the front foot."

Up next is Lincoln at home on January 13.