IT certainly isn’t by accident that chairman Phil Gartside has turned towards his ‘Boot Room’ in his hour of need.

For the last few years, former Wanderers defender, now Academy boss, Jimmy Phillips has been fashioning a stable of coaching talent with a view to bringing through the best young players from the surrounding area.

Names steeped in Burnden Park tradition such as David Lee, Tony Kelly, Keith Branagan and Nicky Spooner have been added to monitor the conveyor belt – attempting to answer the club’s call for more local presence in the first team.

The recent success of the Under-18s would suggest the hard work is starting to bear fruit, but a more pressing concern with the senior side has forced Gartside to put that work on hold for now.

Had circumstances been different, then last week’s sacking of Owen Coyle and his assistants Sandy Stewart and Steve Davis could have had a far more destabilising effect on the squad they left behind.

But the speed at which Phillips and his head of coaching and development in the Academy, Sammy Lee, were installed as interim measures goes some way to showing the esteem in which both are held on the training pitch.

Another coach with a rich Burnden past, Julian Darby, had also been helping out at Lostock and was quickly called upon by Phillips to help out.

But this wasn’t a case of warming the seat until someone else came in – one look at operations at a wild and windy Euxton yesterday told you that things on the training ground are heading in a new direction altogether.

In such driving rain there was no place to hide, even if you wanted to.

Each of the 20 or so players not on international duty were equipped with a GPS device in their vests as they were put through their paces – all the while each step and sprint registering on a laptop whirring away in the background.

Those numbers will be crunched later in the day to help the sports science team assess what aspects of an individual’s training load or recovery need to be altered.

Despite the weather, spirits were high – Darby and Lee shouting out endless encouragement to keep the players on their toes.

But there was no sign of the light-heartedness that has marked Wanderers’ sessions in the last few years, and, indeed, been criticised by some sections of the support.

This was serious stuff, performed at a serious pace.

“The boys have been spot on,” said Lee, who is now in his third stint at the club. “They have been focused and I have been very pleased with their application. We know there is a lot of quality in that dressing room.

“We have a game plan which we want to impose on whoever we play, but in order to do so you have to have the basics right. We have been working hard on that and have stripped things back.

“People say the amount of games is a hindrance in this league, but I see it as a joy.

“It’s a very demanding league but there are three games in quick succession. If we get a good points tally out of those we are back in the mix, and that is what we are looking for.

“People say you are only as good as your last game, but you are not. You are only as good as your next game and that is Bristol City at home where everyone will hopefully be up and ready to go.”

Earlier, skipper Kevin Davies had said this was just the first of two sessions on the day – a modern, and almost continental approach brought in by the stand-in regime.

Wanderers used to shout from the rooftops of their appliance of science during the Sam Allardyce era, and slowly but surely, it seems they are heading back in that direction once again.