Bath Changes The Game For Mangan and Brown

It used to be only goalkeepers who would be left in limbo if they lost their first team place: after all, outfield players can adapt to a different role on the pitch, but a keeper unlikely to pop up on the left wing! However, the way tactics are moving these days, a couple of Wrexham's attacking players could find it hard to find the spot they desire in the team.

It's odd how things turn out. Certainly, Andy Mangan wouldn't have expected to find himself in his current situation when he signed for us, or indeed as recently as the start of this season. Come to think of it, neither would have Dean Saunders.

Admittedly his injury, following a criminally unpunished challenge by Paul Edwards, hasn't helped him. However, things didn't stand still in his absence, and if Wrexham build on the impressive showing at Bath, Mangan will find himself fighting for a place in his favoured position rather than being the man Dean Saunders builds his team around.

Because let's not kid ourselves: that was Plan A as long ago as last Christmas, when Mangan release from Forest Green was negotiated, and possibly even earlier than that. Mangan would be the man who would rattle in the goals, and the issue was whether we'd be able to inject some creativity into last season's staid side.

However, Andy Morrell's form confused matters. At first they looked like a perfectly compatible pair; if Saunders did play two up front they complemented each other well; if he picked one, Morrell looked very effective coming in from the right to support Mangan.

However, Saunders seemed to start seeing things differently after Mangan had shown enthusiasm when Saunders, in a desperate attempt to squeeze as many attacking players as possible onto the pitch at Forest Green, used him on the right.

It was a move repeated against Kidderminster and Barrow, but Mangan is not a natural fit for the position. No problem, you might think; stick him up front when he's fit again and Morrell, much more suited to the right-sided role, can shuttle across. The problem is, things changed at Bath. In Mangan's absence Morrell played the lone striker role to perfection. His energy occupied the centre backs (actually, make that terrified them!) making him a constant threat. End Product? He scored the first and won the free kick the second came from when he typically chased a lost cause and forced a mistake from a panic-stricken defender.

If Morrell keeps playing like this then Saunders has a tough choice: does he play Mangan out of position when there are better alternatives on the right (Wes Baynes, the forgotten man of The Racecourse springs to mind!), or sacrifice Morrell the striker? I see Mangan as crucial to our chances; he's a proven goalscorer and we don't get our hands on them too often. But would I want to see more performances like Morrell's on Monday? Of course. I don't envy Saunders his decision.

David Brown, having had a good run early in the season, also faces a problem if Monday's performance is the shape of things to come. Saunders, perhaps over-reacting to that lack of spark going forward last season, packed four attacking players into his early line-ups with Brown playing in front of the midfield duo. It worked nicely in flashes, not least against Cambridge. However, the Forest Green match saw him rendered peripheral and since then Saunders has clearly had doubts: the longest he has managed on the pitch in a game since the first day of the season is 67 minutes.

Again, if the Bath game was a turning point, Brown finds himself with a battle to regain his place. Instead of a player in his position ahead of Keates and Harris, the midfield looked a lot more balanced with Christian Smith sitting in behind them. So, with his favoured position gone, where would he fit in? He might suit a wide role, but only by trying to drfit inside and find space, as he doesn't have the obvious attributes for that role. Likewise, he doesn't look like a natural lone striker, and there's be plenty of others who'd fancy themselves to be ahead of him in that particular queue.

Naturally, players go in and out of favour at a club. It'll be interesting to watch these two key parts of Saunders' plans fight to regain their spots in his favour. I suspect Mangan, particularly, will be given every chance to find his place somewhere in the eleven, but he might find it harder to break through if the team that played on Monday maintain their form.

Cambridge Podcast

The Cambridge podcast is now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk featuring Dean Saunders, Andy Morrell and Neil Ashton.

Is Morrell The New Dirk Kuyt?

I’ve already referred to Dean Saunders’ accumulating of strikers this Summer. The question is, how is he going to fit them all into his team?

I get the nervous feeling that Saunders tends to be an all-or-nothing sort of man. He tried packing his side with Football League experience and that didn’t work, so now it’s full of Conference stalwarts. Likewise, he put his faith in young lads from big clubs’ academies on the assumption they’d develop and be technically too good for the Conference; now he’s looking for experience. I think the current approach might be wiser, but hope we don’t miss out on the benefits of compromising and having a balanced approach.

Likewise, having seen his side look very solid at the back but toil painfully to create, he now seems to have gone in the opposite direction, filling the squad with attacking options. A major concern at the moment is the fact that most of the record-breaking defence from last season has now left, robbing him of a base the new attacking players can build from, but that’s a different matter. The obvious question to ask is how does he accommodate so many attacking options in the side which unbalancing it?

I rather suspect the answer’s a 4-2-3-1, which supports the notion I’ve already suggested that Andy Morrell is not the player he was. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense; merely that he hasn’t been bought to score thirty-four goals a season, but to harry and hassle defenders in support of Andy Mangan. My assumption when speculation that he might sign began was that he’d be used as a straight partner for Mangan in a 4-4-2. However, the amount of attacking players who have arrived since suggests Saunders might be looking at something different.

You never know how much to read into a dead rubber on the last day of the season, but Saunders fielded a side which looked very comfortable playing 4-3-3 at Hayes, an showed the sort of qualities a tweak to 4-2-3-1 would require. Admittedly five of the starting line-up have now left, although Johnny Hunt did play over an hour off the bench. However, there was a fluidity and flexibility in the side which must have interested Saunders. It suits Kristian O’Leary down to the ground as he is a very solid presence in front of the back four but hardly looks like he’ll suddenly become a player-maker higher up the pitch; his range of passing isn’t broad enough and he lacks the mobility to get back to his defensive station when Wrexham lose the ball.

Playing O’Leary there also allows a couple of progressive-minded full backs to bomb on, and that’s exactly what Saunders has in Curtis Obeng and Neil Ashton. It’s higher up the pitch that alterations would have to be made though, with so many players vying for a place up front. 4-2-3-1 necessitates a lone striker, of course, and surely that would be Andy Mangan.

He’s not just a poacher though; he has impressive movement and showed in that Hayes match that he was happy to switch positions, giving Wes Baynes and Adrian Cieslewicz a turn through the middle. This adaptability could be crucial, as playing this system will ask Morrell to play on the right of the front three. It isn’t a role we’d associate with him, but it’s one he ought to adapt to with ease, given his reserves of energy. Switching with Mangan would cause defences problems as they move across the back four, while David Brown could play the false nine role; it’s a nice, flexible system which might just work!

Never A Sense of Closure at Wrexham

Is it my imagination, or do we sign back a disproportionate number of ex-players?

Andy Morrell is the latest one who looks like he might come back for another stint at The Racecourse. His exploits when we were promoted seven years ago have assured him a place in the club's history, but should he return he'll have to buck a trend if he's not to tarnish that reputation.

When you consider the high number of players who've come back for more, there seem to have been plenty more who didn't live up to expectations in their second spell with us. Gary Bennett, Chris Armstrong, Juan Ugarte, Mark Jones, Lee Roche, Scott Green and Mike Ingham spring immediately to mind.

Leaving the debit column behind, successes are harder to find. Mickey Thomas perhaps; Kevin Russell wasn't the same player up front but reinvented himself as an effective midfielder; and Lee Jones, hampered as he was by injuries in his three subsequent spells, had a decent enough strike rate.

There's an interesting pattern when you look at the players who've had a disappointing second spell with us. They tend to be goalscorers. Each of them went on to better things based on what they'd done for us, but having had a taste of life in the higher divisions, they came back down to us and failed to live up to expectations. And isn't that perfectly natural? Players don't drop back down the divisions unless they have to; strikers who can still score at their old rate wouldn't have to come back to us. Naturally, this means they fail to live up to fans' expectations, even if they didn't do that badly (look at Bennett's stats in his second spell, for example; while he didn't manage to hit his previous heights in a Wrexham shirt, a goal every three games was certainly not bad; it would have worked out at fifteen league goals if he'd been there for the whole season.)

And of course, that's what Morrell would have to watch out for if he returned. The beauty of Morrell was always his energy, and that down-to-earth willingness to put in a good shift will, one suspects, still be there. The encouraging fact that Bury offered him a new contract for this season supports that notion. However, fans will recall the remarkable tally of thirty-four goals he managed in his last season. and if they expect him to replicate that, their expectations would be unreasonable.

People forget that, until that phenomenal season, Morrell looked more like an eager foil for a goalscorer than a spearhead. He was the remarkable foil for Lee Jones when the latter hit five past Cambridge, and was expected to fulfil the same role for him and Lee Trundle the following year. That would be the logical role he would be cast in should he re-sign, doing the donkey work for Andy Mangan. If the deal is sealed, I hope everyone realises that from the off.

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

Desperate Times

You realise you're in dire straits when throwing a defender up front feels like a step forwards!
When Steve Evans went into attack against Rochdale we did make the ball stick a bit more up front; there were flicks an alert striker could latch onto (let me know if you find one!)
It was good in a way to see someone up front who might actually win some of the long stuff we've resorted to pumping up the pitch for the last couple of years, and there might be mileage in the tactic, but it's merely a sticking plaster rather than a solution to the problem of our total lack of creativity. I'd like to see how Proctor and Roberts would fare with a bit of decent service.
A couple of weeks ago I speculated about whether the type of raw, aggressive target man we had in Jim Steel in the Eighties was extinct. I don't think they are, on reflection, and I'd love to see Brian Little find one. There was speculation in the summer that we were after John Murphy, who went to Chester. He'd do the job, I reckon, but then anyone who can discomfort centre backs and keep the ball in the other side's box a bit more would be a big step in the right direction.
He doesn't have to be six foot three, although I think that would help! We only have to remember Andy Morrell to realise that a striker can get under defenders' skin to great effect without being huge. While we naturally remember his goalscoring exploits in the 2002-3 season most clearly; don't forget that he established himself in the side as a willing lieutenant for apparently more potent finishers.
When Lee Trundle was tearing it up during his spectacular opening spell as a Wrexham player, it was Morrell's enthusiastic running which distracted the defenders and helped to make him look good, while Lee Jones was quick to credit Morrell after his record-equalling five goal salvo against Cambridge United.
In term of style the closest we have to Morrell is Marc Williams, but I'm not sure I want to see him over-used this season. That's no comment on his ability as I suspect he has the potential to be a very good player for us. However, I feel he's at the stage of his career where he'd be best served by getting carefully-regulated exposure to senior football rather than being lobbed in at the deep end and charged with saving our bacon. We have no right to demand so much from him when more experienced players have failed to do the job, and putting pressure on him after every goalless game, replacing him in desperation if he can't swiftly come up with the goods, or subjecting him to the fans' frustrations could damage his development.
No, we need the new Jim Steel, and we need him now!