Battering Kettering

Did you see that? I must admit that, in commentary, I found myself falling back onto a sense of incredulity that the Wrexham side which has looked so uncreative could suddenly burst into life so fruitfully.

Never mind the fact that we were denied at the close; if we keep playing like that, we'll win plenty of games this season.

That's the point though; if we can keep doing it. Let's hope we can build on a performance of actual quality and keep replicating it.

There was certainly plenty to work on. That lack of creativity I alluded to earlier was absent: Lamine Sakho and Curtis Obeng offered genuine threats on either flank, ably backed up by the full backs, and with the centre of midfield under our control.

Something which particularly pleased me was that we looked good against a side which played 4-3-3, a system I'd say we haven't looked all that clever against this season. We used the width I mentioned earlier to exploit the lack of width in the system, with the two Kettering wide men basically strikers, and finally necessitated a switch to 4-4-2.

Let's hope we can now replicate this in a couple of home games which, on the face of it, look very winnable. Lowestoft and Hayes will, I would imagine, not offer us such space behind their defence or down its sides as they won't come at us like Kettering tried to.

So can we crack a team open when they park the bus? We all know the season so far has been characterised by a failure to do so, but did the Kettering game show us that we are about to turn a corner going forward? I sincerely hope so!

Lamine Sakho 1 El Hadji Diouf 2

Obviously Lamine Sakhp's Hummer is the most exciting thing every to happen to Wrexham-indeed, all of North Wales. However, as you can see, fellow Senegal international El Hadji Diouf has a car which is even more of a crime against decency:

With two weeks left until...............

we start the Blue Square campaign the team and squad are coming together very nicely. Dean Saunders, true to his word, has not been rushed and signed just anyone. This week has seen Matty Wolfenden and Lamine Sakho agree to join the cause, whilst Tom Kearney had moved on to pastures new. The squad whilst being smaller than last year is packed with players who have shown considerable promise or have experience of playing at a higher level.

Swine flu (or a virus anyway) hit the players this week with four missing the match against Preston but the biggest health scare to hit the club was the saga of Marc's right foot. Williams limped off after only six minutes on Tuesday causing his manager major first half worry and some not inconsiderable concern in the commentary position as Mark and I reflected and agonised on another spell without our talisman. Fortunately it proved to be ill founded as the bone was not broken and with any luck the Welsh U21 striker will be available for the visit of Eastbourne.

So are any of our strikers capable of scoring 20+ goals and driving us towards the holy grail of promotion back to the Football League. Their track records say no but then so did Benno's and Andy Morrell's before they fired in the goals that earned us promotion in 92~93 and 02~03. Andy Mangan potentially could have repeated last seasons performance but he is now banned for betting activity so why can't Marc, Gareth, Obi, Simon or Matty score 20 goals? No reason at all in my view given the right service who is to say Marc Williams can't be the new Gary Bennett or Matty Wolfenden the new Andy Morrell. Besides which there are still two weeks to go and Deano hasn't let us down so far who knows what excitement and new signings they will bring.

Steve