Less Than Marvellous

Obviously the most important thing at the match yesterday didn't happen on the pitch, but as a little relief from the ongoing ownership trauma, might I ask a question about the game itself? Namely, what the hell was going on out there?

A side built on the soundness of its foundations, which is in the chase for the club record number of clean sheets in a season, fell apart in spectacular style. Why?

Well, it was apparent that the right side of the defence collapsed, and it has to be pointed out that it was the one part of the line-up which was different from that which embarked on the wonderful unbeaten run which suddenly seems like ancient history.

Jordan McMillan had a very solid debut against Crawley, the one reservation about him being that he doesn't have the attacking thrust of the man he was replacing, Curtis Obeng.

Sadly, he looked much less confortable yesterday, his problems summed up by the fifth goal when he speculatively appealed for an offside rather than deal with a cross which was allowed to float too far across the box. As a result, his man had an easy finish.

Mind you, the ball should have been cut out before McMillan's error of judgement. Marvin Andrews misjudged the flight of the ball horribly, and sadly it wasn't his first mistake.

With the benefit of hindsight, plenty of people questioned the decision to drop Frank Sinclair and bring Andrews back in. Their argument makes sense; Sinclair had been doing well alongside Mark Creighton recently and was unlucky to be left out.

However, I must say that most of the people I spoke to before the game were happy with the decision, and I was one of them. Sinclair is forty this year, and has already been injury-prone since he came to Wrexham. He needs to be looked after, and with a big game coming up on Tuesday, the decision to give him a rest and bring in Andrews, who has been a great success this season don't forget, seemed perfectly sound.

Saunders might also have been aware that Gateshead have genuine quality out wide; Alan Shearer famously valued the quality of Martin Brittain's crossing when he was at Newcaslte, and Nelthorpe is useful on the other flank. Perhaps Saunders thought the height of Creighton and Andrews would be valuable in dealing with theirdelivery from wide areas. Again, based on what we've seen before today that would be a sound assumption; it emphatically wasn't the case though.

I suspect another factor was larger in Saunders' mind than resting Sinclair or guarding against Gateshead's crossing ability though. Andrews has been excellent this season, but he's a big man in his mid-thirties who, it shouldn't be forgotten, started only seventeen games in total over the last two seasons through injury.

In his early performances for Wrexham he naturally looked rusty, doing some good things but making occasional misjudgements. That especially happened when the ball was in the air; his aerial prowess is legendary, but Andrews is a centre back who looks to time his jumps rather than use his bulk to occupy the space required to repel the ball and letting it come to him, as Creighton is. That means that if his timing is slightly off, Andrews makes mistakes. As he got more games under his belt this season, Andrews became more sound, and looked in magnificent form when he was injured at Altrincham on New Years Day. Perhaps Saunders reckoned that he needed Andrews to get his match-sharpness back as soon as possible, ready for a tough run-in, and decided the only way to do that was to give him some starts.

Again, there's absolutely no flaw in his logic. Sadly, yesterday's game was one in which logic went out of the window.

Last Chance To See

With the regular overhaul pretty much complete, we can start to settle into seeing how the new squad operates, but don't let yourself get too familiar with them. There's another huge revamp on the horizon, and perhaps some nettles should have been grasped this time round to avoid it.

Irrespective of our success or failure this season, a chunk of the side will disband next summer. If we fail to mount a promotion challenge we'll see plenty of our new signings depart courtesy of the policy of generally only offering one-year contracts. For the same reason, if we succeed we'll probably lose a few of our best players, who won't be tied to us. However, a trio of changes look inevitable no matter what happens on the pitch.

Firstly, should be get the centre back Saunders has been chasing on loan, he surely won't hang around. However, it's the demise of two more familiar faces which I'm thinking of. Frank Sinclair is surely embarking on his final season as a professional. That he has kept going so long is a huge testimony to his professionalism, and he has already made a very positive role for us. To see him still committing himself to his task, even though it's to try to aid a mid-table club in the fifth tier of the pyramid, is hugely impressive. It would be an honour if Wrexham turn out to be his final club.

One would assume the same also applies to Gareth Taylor. Another genuinely fine pro, he was the sharpest knife in a pretty blunt cutlery draw last season. (in case you were wondering, Lamine Sakho was a spoon.)
The worry is that Taylor might now be blunted. Of his ten goals last season, only one came in 2010. Furthermore, that was a fluke; a mishit cross that Wimbledon's keeper misjudged. Throw in another glorious fluke against Lowestoft, when Sakho's inaccurate header hit the back of his head and looped over the keeper, and two penalties and he only got six intentional goals in open play, the last of which came in October.

The fact that he began to pick up injuries in 2010 is a worry too; like Sinclair he showed the early signs of physical decline which might signal the end for them. Taylor does not appear to be in Saunders's thoughts as a first choice striker as the season begins, but he might be a highly valuable tool from the bench, offering us an aerial option when things get tough. Cast your mind back to the superlative job he did late on at Mansfield too, when the way he held the ball up in the closing stages was a huge factor in us keeping The Stags at bay.

However, don't expect Taylor to be the central figure he was last season. This campaign might be your last chance to see a couple of venerable internationals.

Celebrity Big Brother

It would appear Dean Saunders didn't get his central defensive loan target after all, and has fallen back on the celebrity signing option in Marvin Andrews instead. I hope he's able to buck the recent trend of such deals.

The reason for my edginess is simple. Name me a player who has arrived with a big name on a short-term contract who has been a successful signing for us. Or even one who was around at the start of the following season will do. Yup, I'm struggling too.

Actually, there is one who might tick the boxes: Frank Sinclair. But, as I outlined yesterday, this is a man of rare professionalism, able to suck up the fact that he's in the Conference and apply himself to his job, day-in, day-out. Hopefully Andrews is the same, but it worries me when I look at the scales to weigh this issue up. On one side is Sinclair; on the other are Lamine Sakho, Patrick Suffo, Matt Jansen, John Curtis, Christian Gyan and Andrew Crofts. And that's just off the top of my head.

I totally understand the temptation to make such signings. These players are all, on paper, better than the level of football we're playing at. Okay, they might be getting on and lacking fitness, but if you can nurse them back to health you've got a bargain. I like this logic in many ways, but it's an approach which sadly has the odds stacked against it; if you go back further than those names I just listed you can also throw in the second comings of Juan Ugarte and Chris Armstrong. Wishful thinking is a natural state of mind to slip into, but the hard-nosed approach is to get hungry young lads who have the appetite to get themselves out of the Conference.

Of course, Andrews could prove to be a Sinclair-like exception that proves the rule. I do hope so; his rugged style should certainly be suited to repelling some of the Conference's more direct sides. It looks like Saunders' stated aim of cherry-picking the best players from other sides in our division, admirably exemplified by the signings of Mangan and Knight-Percival, was a brief aberration though.

Andrews is certainly an individual-read this review of his autobiography for a taster-and he might have the character to rise to this rather diminished challenge. Indeed, he has been playing in Scottish football, so small crowds and rudimentary facilities shouldn't be a shock to him, and Trinidadians like Dennis Lawrence, Carlos Edwards and Silvio Spann have certainly shown commitment when they've come to The Racecourse. I just hope Andrews can match that, and beat the odds.

Westwood Loss Part of a Worrying Bigger Picture

In itself, the loss of Ashley Westwood doesn't fill me with dread. In context, though, it's a worry.

Westwood is sound, but not irreplaceable. I thought he finished the season playing as well as he ever did for us, but the fact is he's a solid Conference centre back in his mid-thirties, so hardly impossible to replace.

However, when you factor in the number of other defenders we've lost over the Summer, you start to worry. A back four of Spann, Westwood, Assoumani and Taylor in front of Sam Russell is, to a great extent what earned us a club record for least league goals conceded last season, and now they're all gone.

Of those still with us, only Chris Maxwell would be likely to disrupt that line-up, with Curtis Obeng still learning and Frank Sinclair unavailable too often. Hopefully Aaron Brown will decide to stay and lend some stability and continuity to the only part of the side which actually worked last season. It all makes the decision to release Mike Williams look even more ill-advised.

Westwood seemed a contradictory character. His intensity was central to his personality and performance, and could be both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand he was a highly-driven character, whom Saunders singled out at the end of his first season as the only player with a winning mentality. Certainly he had a close relationship with his manager; when injured he'd scout for him and there were rumours from plausible sources after Terry Darracott's departure that Westwood would be installed as his assistant.

However, his will-to-win could spill over in an ugly way. His involvement in the fracas against Barrow at the start of the season didn't look too clever. Admittedly the evidence was circumstantial, but it seemed fairly damning; after an altercation from a corner the Barrow players react furiously, as does their boss, Dave Bayliss, when one of their players loses a tooth. The claim was that Westwood punched him, and the fact that he immediately had to have a gash in his hand bandaged seems to support that claim.

An incident which there was certainly evidence for came during another bout of fisticuffs, following Lamine Sakho's disgraceful behaviour against Hayes and Yeading. The TV footage is damning; as attention was focussed on Sakho following his headbutt, Westwood runs into the crowd, then disappears out of shot, only to return from a different direction, sneaking up behind an opponent to punch him in the back of the head and retreat hurriedly.

It was hardly the actions of a captain, and he was lucky the incident took place in The Conference, where recourse to video evidence is highly unlikely. These weren't isolated instances of indiscipline, and neither was his constant dissent following a yellow card at Luton for complaining to a referee who did him a huge favour by not delivering a second yellow.

So Westwood was prone to errors of judgement, and would make mistakes in his play sometimes, seeming to suffer from lapses of concentration. Yet with so many other effective defenders gone, his loss could be costly. I wouldn't want to mark him when Kettering get a corner against us either!

Histon Podcast

The Histon podcast is now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk featuring Dean Saunders, Frank Sinclair, Mike Williams, Marc Williams and Gareth Taylor.

On Reflection

You know what? The more I think about it, the more I suspect we've just achieved our best result of the season so far. After all, Stevenage are second in the table and unbeaten at home, and we dug in and, with Frank Sinclair, Mani Assoumani and Chris Maxwell once again forming a redoubtable triumvirate at the heart of our defence, kept another clean sheet.

Not only that, we ended a couple of weird sequences of results, one of which is particularly remarkable.

It was our first away draw since we went to Woking in March, eleven away games ago, but even more impressively, it was our first 0-0 draw away from home since February 2008, forty-four away games ago.

Incredibly, it was the first time Marc Williams started a goalless away draw!