Keates and One Other

If ever there was a marquee signing by a side operating under a restricted budget, it’s Dean Keates!
In fact, my main worry about signing him is a simple question: why would a player with his pedigree want to come down to The Conference?
Shrugging aside that nagging question, we must hope he will deliver on his promise as there are clear issues in the centre of our midfield. The loss of Andy Fleming is a massive one; he might not have fulfilled his potential going forward, with just one career goal achieved so far, but he is still young and that side of his game will surely develop. The fact is that his energy is a great attribute, and the thought of him doing the legwork for Keates is an attractive one which will now never come to fruition.
Instead we have a likely partnership between Keates and Jay Harris. Harris certainly offers energy, but the lack of height in that partnership is worthy of concern. Take a look at this week’s Non League Paper to see what I mean. On the cover of their preview of the season, there’s a team photo composed of one player from each team in our division. Our representative, Keates, is dwarfed by the players around him (apart from the gloriously diminutive Alan Wright, of course!)
Perhaps it will work out for the best; both players are certainly tenacious and there can be no doubt that Keates can handle himself at a much higher level than this. However, Saunders admitted when he played Nathan Fairhurst and Angelos Tsiaklis together that a lightweight midfield is likely to be exploited in the Conference.
Is the greater experience of Keates and Harris enough to justify Saunders abandoning the idea of using a big man like Christian Smith in midfield? Perhaps so, although it shouldn't be forgotten that we enjoyed a good run of results when Tsiaklis and Fairhurst were in tandem, ended only when their partnership was disturbed by the arrival of Robert Crofts.
I can't help feeling that Fairhurst and Tsiaklis were dismissed too easily; indeed, the lack of opportunity offered them last season makes me question why they were both brought back to The Racecourse in the first place. Hopefully They have shown that a diminutive duo can have an impact on The Conference; otherwise Saunders will be back to the drawing board a lot earlier than he would have expected this season.

The curse of the player of the season trophy!

Beware the curse of the player of the season trophy!

It seems to be something of a poisoned chalice of late. Andy Fleming picks up the bauble before the Rushden game, then goes home because he’s not hanging around! Likewise, Marc Williams won it last season and hasn’t scored since, his most notable achievement since the award being a serious injury!

And the season before that? Neil Roberts became the first player of the year to be immediately released!

And it goes on: Steve Evans won it the year before and went on to score six goals from centre back in the following campaign. Unfortunately, three of them were into our own net as we were relegated from the Football League!

What an incredible sequence! Perhaps we need to vote tactically next time; if we’d picked Richard Hope two seasons ago he might have been held hostage for a year by the New Broughton Liberation front and we could have stayed up!

York Podcast

The York podcast is now up at http://www.wrexhamfan.co.uk/ featuring Dean Saunders and Andy Fleming.

A Matter of Balance

Christian Smith's suspension leaves Dean Saunders with no option but to wrestle with an issue which is coming to define our season: the balance between defence and attack.

He knows that in Smith and Andy Fleming, a pairing who have been fixtures in the centre of midfield for a while now, he has a duo who offer admirable protection to our defence but are less effective creatively.

He might be tempted to take a chance and select a more inventive player, but that nagging doubt which always afflicts managers is there in the back of his head: can he afford to? Defeats get managers sacked, and whereas it's easy enough for us armchair experts to urge approaching games with abandon (after all, it works for us on Football Manager 2010!) it's not so easy to let go when your head's on the block.

But will Saunders grasp the nettle now? Lacking Smith for three games, two of which are at home, offers him a chance to be more progressive. Of course he has a wide range of central midfielders to choose from, having collected them as obsessively as a ten year old schoolboy amasses Match Attax cards (and believe me, that particular line of acquisition is just as expensive!) As their names suggest, Tsiaklis and Taboubi represent the more exotic option, while Fairhurst would be a safe pair of hands. An option I don't expect to see Saunders take would in many ways be the most intriguing though, and would certainly go down well with many Wrexham fans; does he dare to unleash Mark Jones in a central role?

Kettering Podcast

The Kettering podcast is now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk featuring Dean Saunders, Mani Assoumani and Andy Fleming

Oxford Podcast

The Oxford podcast is now up at http://www.wrexhamfan.co.uk/ featuring Dean Saunders, Andy Fleming and United boss Chris Wilder.

Quality in Short Supply

If you want an indication of how disappointing last season was-oh go on, you know you do!-then the Non League Paper is currently in the process of offering it.

It's the bible of the non-league game: if anyone's entitled to draw conclusions from the Conference season it's them. Today's issue takes us half way through a series which runs through the outstanding performers of the last campaign-so far they've had the best twenty strikers and goalkeepers of the non-league game.

Thus far we've had just one player in the lists-Marc Williams coming in at number fourteen on the lists of strikers. The thing is, not only do I not disagree-Williams would, I'm sure, have been higher if he hadn't got injured-but I can't really see another Wrexham player who would be sure to feature in the upcoming lists of the best midfielders and defenders.

Perhaps Andy Fleming or Ryan Flynn will be in the elite in the middle of the park (perhaps Nathan Fairhurst might have pushed for a spot too if Andy Crofts hadn't taken his place). Beyond them I'm struggling. When we can't get more than one or two players in the best eighty players of the division, you could hardly describe it as a year to be proud of.

Fair Play to Fairhurst

All credit to Nathan Fairhurst-he's shown an attitude you don't seem to find too often in the modern game.

We tend to see players putting their short term advancement first these days-hell, Cristiano Ronaldo couldn't cope with losing thirty minutes of me-time against Manchester City last Sunday, could he?

So to see Nathan Fairhurst reject a contract with Preston in order to get first team football three divisions lower is quite something. He talks, most logically, about taking a step backwards in order to take a step forwards in the future, and in doing so illustrates that he has the sort of cool head we need as we continue to look for a way out of the turmoil.

But his signature is important for reasons far beyond that. For me the crucial factor which destabilised our promotion push was when Fairhurst's excellent partnership with Andy Fleming was disrupted to accommodate Andy Crofts.

Fairhurst had really settled into the role and was playing well when he was dropped-in fact the way he was marginalised made me worry that we were destroying our hopes of signing him permanently-a concern which grew when Crofts missed the last two games of the season but Tom Kearney was selected ahead of Fairhurst!

Still, Fairhurst has signed the dotted line, and he may prove to be Saunders' greatest coup. He spoke soon after he arrived of convincing the on-loan players to stay even though they were too good for The Conference. While his temporary signings represented his best pieces of business, I think it's fair to say that by the time the dust had settled on the campaign, Fairhurst was the on-loan player who looked most like he ought to be playing at a higher level. In signing him, Saunders has got the pre-season off to an excellent start.

Decline and Fall

Our current slide is a bit worrying, isn't it? Going into a tailspin doesn't have to have disastrous consequences as long as you pull out of it quickly, but that's something we've signally failed to do. Our aspirations have changed dramatically from being a hot tip to get into the play-offs to something approaching outside bets: I think that's how you'd describe a side who has to win three games in hand to get level with the last play-off spot.

The root cause of this decline is not clear, of course. I've already looked at Gavin Ward's removal from the team, but clearly the goalkeeper is not the only person who should shoulder the blame. The elephant in the room is the coincidence of Wrexham's loss of form and Andrew Crofts' arrival.

Plenty of fans on Red Passion have brought the issue up mind, and a run of seven games without a win since he came from Gillingham, coming after a run of fine form, has raised a lot of eyebrows. It's certainly fair to say that Nathan Fairhurst, who was enjoying a good vein of form when he made way for Crofts, has every right to be disappointed to lose his place. However, Saunders said shortly before the transfer that irrespective of whether people are playing well, he isn't nostalgic and would drop players if he could bring in others who would improve the team. That's the ruthless attitude you want to see in a manager, but his lauding of Crofts on his arrival makes it difficult to reverse his decision without losing face.

It's a peculiar conundrum. Crofts undoubtedly has the pedigree, as Saunders correctly pointed out. You can see it in some of his passing. However, it might be argued we've lost a little but in midfield when we don't have the ball.

Fairhurst and Andy Fleming might look like a lightweight pairing, but they are full of energy and press relentlessly when we haven't got the ball, forcing errors and regaining possession swiftly. Crofts is more of a holding midfielder, and I wonder if this has brought about one of those subtle shifts in the make-up of the side which has far-reaching consequences.

It all comes back to that idea of a tidal wave being caused by enough butterflies beating their wings simultaneously. There are a number of small factors stacking up to destabilise the side, some of which lead on to the next. Young players are bound to have inconsistent patches, so a young side is likely to suffer downturns in form. When you get a few key players lose form and confidence at the same time, you have a problem, and I think it's fair to say that Mike Williams and Jon Brown will recognise that they've not quite been at their best in the last couple of weeks.
Then there's the issue of our habit of conceding sloppy goals which, irrespective of the fact that a Conference level you're always likely to have to build a team from players who make errors, is getting beyond a joke. There always seems to be somebody ready to lose concentration for an instant at some point in the second half. Whether that's a fitness issue-I believe Saunders is frustrated by this issue in some respects and would dearly love to get a good pre-season in with his players-is a moot point.

Oh yes, and just in case I forget, we have lost our best player through injury for the rest of the season. With no real cover for him, that might just have an influence too, don't you know?

Never Mind The Bollands

Phil Bolland's return to The Racecourse was anticipated by many of us with a great deal of curiosity, but like many things you look forward to, it didn't turn out as one might have expected.

Bolland was a steady presence in Brian Little's doomed side last season; indeed, he was one of the few players Little signed who could be judged a success. Thus Little's decision to release him was something of a mystery to many, although with hindsight it made sense as Little's decision-making was hardly the most reliable!

His performance at The Racecourse last Thursday raised a few eyebrows. His angry reaction to Andy Fleming's high tackle is open to interpretation-I wouldn't be too bothered if one of our players reacted like that to a poor challenge, but he went in with his studs showing too. The ref probably got it about right in showing them both the yellow card.

His forearm smash on Marc Williams was a totally different matter, a nasty attack on a player when the referee's back was turned which, if it had been spotted, would have been an easy decision. If only this was the Premiership, where the TV evidence would have brought him the retrospective he deserved. At least he was punished when his moment of clumsiness teed Jeff Louis up for our second goal.

He played like a man with a chip on his shoulder, and perhaps that's explained by the fact that apparently he has been telling people at Cambridge that he wanted desperately to stay at The Racecourse but couldn't because of his serious differences with Brian Carey. Well, judging by what we saw on Thursday he's welcome to feel that way; Westwood and Williams look like more than adequate replacements!

Woking Podcast

The Supporters Association podcast is now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk featuring Dean Saunders, Andy Fleming and Woking boss Phil Gilchrist.