Reed it and Weep

As Dean Saunders prepares to tell players if they’re staying or going, he must desperately be hoping he’s making the right calls. There have been plenty of poor decisions made with respect to the players allowed to leave Wrexham in recent years, some of which are obvious and high profile. A less celebrated departure could well turn out to be the most costliest mistake of all though. Should Brian Little really have let Jamie Reed go?

There was a real risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water as Little reshaped the squad twice in the space of six months. Some players, like Matt Crowell, were dismissed before they’d really had a chance to show him what they could do, while the release of the likes of Neil Roberts beggared belief. Reed’s departure didn’t merit any headlines, but it did make me feel uncomfortable at the time.

After all, the lad was young and had time to improve. He was prolific in the reserves and for the youth team, and although he hadn’t found the net in the first team, he’d been restricted to appearances off the bench and had looked lively in those.

Admittedly he had missed some decent opportunities in those rare outings, and that might well have counted against him. For me, it was a positive though. Okay, you want to see a striker take his chances, and I understand the frustration of seeing them being frittered away when we needed something drastic to happen if we were to stay in the Football League. However, at least he was getting into those positions, and despite being a youngster his confidence wasn’t being damaged by the misses to the extent that he stopped trying to get into the danger area.

Reed won the Daily Post’s trophy for the League of Wales player of the season at the weekend, and from what I’ve seen of him on Sgorio, he deserves it. Having played a season as a winger for Rhyl, he has been a crucial creative influence in Bangor’s side this term, and has stepped up to the plate in front of goal after Chris Sharp’s departure.

I just wish he’d had the chance to develop like this with us.