Full Back or Half Empty?

I admit it, pre-season meant nothing. At least not to us fans. This is the one genuine time of the year when a manager genuinely is the only person who can fully assess what has just been happening on the pitch. After all, he's the only one who actually knows what he was asking for from the players, and what he specifically was hoping to get out of the exercise. We still cough up to watch them, though.

Still, certain observations can be made, and one of the more interesting facets of our preparatory games has been the situation at full back. Whether you view the situation on either side of our defence as half full or half empty depends on the extent to which you're willing to put your faith in youth.

We've got four specialist full backs in the squad, two on either flank, if you discount potential stand-ins like Kai Edwards and Frank Sinclair. (I hope Dean Saunders discounts the Sinclair option too; I had Sinclair as a shoo-in for player of the season at the turn of the year, but asking him to haul his ageing hamstrings up and down the flank at left back at Altrincham meant he picked up an injury which led to his campaign descending into a mess of injuries and mistimed tackles. As for Edwards, Saunders says he’s looking to loan more players out, and he’s the one member of the senior squad who hasn’t been given a squad number. Go figure.)

The thing is, the two most impressive full backs in pre-season by my reckoning have been the two kids, Declan Walker and Johnny Hunt. I'm sure Saunders won't be too shocked to see Walker play like this; after all, his debut at Hayes was as good a first appearance as I can recall in a Wrexham shirt.

There's a huge danger in assuming one performance by a teenager guarantees a similar output week-in, week-out, but Walker's pre-season suggests he will start the Cambridge game ahead of Curtis Obeng, whose terrific pace is hampered by the fact that a schooling with Manchester City's coaches, followed by a year of coalface experience in the Conference, haven't yet eradicated the naïveté from his game. Just ask Saunders, who is often seen to be frustrated by his decision-making and spent a good couple of minutes on his own with Obeng after the final whistle at Vauxhall Motors taking him through his positioning.

The left flank will, surely, see Neil Ashton start, but I wonder if Saunders ought to be bold and throw Hunt in at the deep end. Admittedly, starting with two full backs boasting two starts between them in their nascent careers might be madness, but Hunt has looked more solid than Ashton in pre-season. Ashton impresses when he goes forward, but so does Hunt; the defensive part of their game is more important, especially as we're looking to piece things together at the back after losing a most of a record-breaking defence.

Ashton has been troubled when a wide player runs at him, most notably in the Liverpool game when the young Spaniard Silva ran rings round him. Mind you, the Saturday before Aberystwyth got their winner when Craig Williams slalomed rather too easily inside Ashton to tee the scorer up. Hunt looked vulnerable in his only first team outing at left back, as an early substitute for Aaron Brown at Hayes, but has appeared solid in pre-season. Notably, Silva's threat receded to nothing once Hunt replaced Ashton with twenty minutes left.

Anyone watching that game who wasn't familiar with the Wrexham squad would have assumed the first choice left back had come on at the end. Hopefully Ashton will use pre-season to get himself into the groove defensively as I strongly suspect he will be the first choice in the opening weeks of the season. Having played much of his career at left midfield, he needs to show he's equally adept in a more defensive role.

The Bearded Wonder!

Dean Saunders' squad is starting to take shape, and the pedigree of the players he's signing is sending out a clear message of his intentions.

Last Summer we saw him bring in young lads like Curtis Obeng, Nathan Fairhurst and Adrian Cieslewicz. Now he's focussed on players who are established at our level or higher. It seems like a wise move to me.

Chris Blackburn, like Dean Keates, has enjoyed recent success in the Football League, and assuming they're fit they appear to be very astute signings. Of course, the one question when bringing players in from the higher levels of the game is their motivation. I'm not suggesting any doubt about either of the two we've snagged; I've never met either of them and have only heard good things about their atitude. There is a danger that players arrive dissaffected from the higher levels though, and perhaps feeling they've nothing to prove as their achievements are behind them. It's the one factor Saunders needs to watch out for as he looks to augment the squad with some experience and quality.

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!

Luton Podcast

The Luton podcast is now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk featuring Dean Saunders, Curtis Obeng and Marc Williams.