FORMER Wanderers boss Keith Hill has been sacked by Tranmere Rovers despite reaching Wembley this season – AND qualifying for the upcoming League Two play-offs.

Rovers missed out on automatic promotion in the final couple of weeks of the season, finishing six points behind Ian Evatt’s Super Whites.

Defeats to Barrow and Forest Green and a goalless draw against Colchester saw them drop to seventh – but still have a hope of League One football with a two-legged semi-final against Morecambe to come next week.

Hill also led Tranmere to the Papa John’s Trophy final, where they were beaten 1-0 by Sunderland.

Nevertheless, Prenton Park chairman Mark Palios this morning revealed that Hill had left the club.

“Despite success achieved on the pitch in the form of securing a place in the Play-Offs and reaching the Papa John’s Trophy final, in the Play-Offs an entire season gets distilled into two or three games,” he said.

“I have to do what I think gives us the best chance of achieving promotion in those games and I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that means making the change before the semi-finals begin.”

Boltonian Hill managed 33 games with the Whites in the 2019/20 season, picking up the job just days after the club had been rescued from administration.

He quickly assembled a squad which briefly looked like it would overturn a 12-point deduction and save itself from relegation but when form tailed off at the start of 2020, he quickly lost favour with the Bolton fans.

He departed last summer after the pandemic had brought a premature end to the campaign with a record of just six wins (18 per cent).