The North-South Divide

There are sea changes afoot in the Blue Square Premier which are not only important in terms of the quality of our opponents next season, but will certainly make a difference to travelling fans’ pockets.

A gradual geographic shift has accelerated this year, and the division looks more northern than ever. Of the six sides which have left the division only one is northern, albeit a convenient neighbour in Chester. Of the other five, four are from the south-eastern heartland of the Conference Premier in Grays, Ebbsfleet, Stevenage and Oxford, Forest Green being the others. If, as many predict, they are reprieved by Salisbury dropping out, our petrol bills will be slashed even further.

Despite any understandable sympathy we might feel for York City, with Mike Ingham, Levi Mackin and Martin Foyle in their ranks, it was undoubtedly a good thing for us that they lost in the play-off final, and not only because a weekend in York’s an attractive prospect.

Oxford are one of the powerhouses of the Conference, a club which has marshalled its resources and used its size and earning potential to create a side capable of bullying the division. With Luton cottoning on under Richard Money in the latter half of the season, a York win would have left the prospect of next season turning into a two-horse race, with The Hatters and The Us pulling away from the rest of us. York have done well, but they aren’t likely to dominate the division like that.

The other impact on the Conference is the number of basket cases dropping out of the Football League. Hard as it might be to believe, we’re one of the more stable set-ups to drop into the Conference, as the financial backing the club gave Brian Little and Dean Saunders in our attempt to bounce back up showed. Contrast that with Chester, who failed to last the season, or Darlington, who come down with all sorts of endemic problems accumulated over the years.

The process of churning up the sediment of the Conference, as healthy clubs like Stevenage are replaced by diseased ones dropping off the backside of the Football League, must surely be a good thing for us. With plenty of small clubs who aren’t really equipped to sustain a promotion push to add to those who are limping down to our level, there should be only so many clubs capable of compiling a side capable of going for promotion. That ought to be in our favour, as long as we can get organised ourselves!

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!

Relief!!

Well, I'm glad that's over. And you know what? I hated every minute of it. Especially the last fifteen minutes, when it felt like we couldn't possibly survive.

Still, we did, and there was one aspect of the experience I enjoyed: Steve Edwards and Paul Jones' commentary was superb and a real pleasure to listen to. Except for when I was accused of missing the game because I was at my ballet lesson. There'll be consequences.........

Stevenage podcast

The Final Whistle podcast and audio highlights are now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk

This is agony!

Final whistle please ref!!!!!! We're hanging on grimly!

Gutted!

I am so disappointed! I can't get to the Stevenage game, or the Wimbledon match, and Kettering's a push as I can't get that far after work! What a nightmare! Bizarre as it might sound, missing out on a Wrexham match is still a punishment rather than a reward!

It just feels so wrong to be sitting around when I should be on the open road (traffic permitting!) And then what about tonight? Steve, Paul and Geraint are great to listen to, BUT I WANT TO DO IT TOO! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!!! So I'll sit there and listen to it, feeling sulky and helpless.

At least when you see us getting pasted you can make sense of it; listening to a game or following it on teletext or text commentary is just cruel. The feeling of powerlessness is akin to being Forest Green's goalkeeper, I'd imagine.

So when you hear weeping throughout the night emanating from the general direction of Borras, spare a thought for me!

FA Trophy Final Slideshow

Pejic Takes Wembley!

Well, having got myself excited earlier this season about the thought of Wrexham getting to Wembley in the F.A. Trophy, I wasn't about to deny myself the experience, so my lad and I went to Wembley yesterday to see what we missed out on. And we missed out on something great!

The F.A. Trophy Final. the non-league showpiece, is a real day out for both sides and anyone else who has more than a passing acquaintance with them-how else can you explain 27,000 fans turning out to watch two sides whose combined attendance is more like 4,000?

It also accounted for the high volume of day-trippers in the crowd and, without wanting to sound like I'm being critical because the atmosphere was fantastic, there was a sense of being in the midst of people enjoying a good day out as much as the football-the sense of tension was diluted and at one point my view of a dangerous cross into the goalmouth was obscured by the man in front of me jumping up to wave to a friend who'd just phoned him!

But it would be churlish to focus on that. The atmosphere was great, the game entertaining, and the York Ultras made it feel like an occasion, setting smoke bombs off and admirably still jumping around behind the goal immediately after Stevenage had opened the scoring.

Of course, of particular interest to me was the large contingent of York players with links to Wrexham. There was no sign of Christian Smith, Adam Smith or Simon Brown, but three familiar faces were in the starting eleven.

Mike Ingham, in goal, had a solid game, making one particularly sharp save and having no chance with either of Borough's goals while Levi Mackin worked hard and economically in midfield, not managing to turn the game in City's favour but looking tidy enough. The star performance came from Pejic though.

When I saw he was starting at left back I assumed it was yet another example of Martin Foyle's genius! However, he looked rather good. He got forward well-in fact he was unlucky to put a twenty-five yarder wide on one of his surprisingly confident forays forward on his wrong flank and linked well with Adam Boyes, York's impressive 18-year-old prodigy who has spent part of this season on trial at Old Trafford.

Furthermore, defensively he did well, making a crucial clearance off the line and meeting plenty of crosses into the York area. You know what I'm going to say next-are all the defenders we're left with at the moment better than Pej?

The over-riding feeling was that I'd had a great day out at Wembley-next season I want another one, with Wrexham!

A Crucial Stage

An excellent point made on the Red Passion Messageboard by Drury-red. By the time Stevenage, already well ahead of us in terms of games played, take the field in a league fixture again, we'll have played four Conference matches, away to Woking and Northwich, then at home to Crawley and Kidderminster. It's a great opportunity to pull ourselves back up into the frame, despite the table's current unpromising appearance.

They're the team we're chasing, in fifth place nine points ahead of us having played three games more, so it's in our hands to climb above them by the time they get a chance to register another point. The one problem with the theory's whether we can pull out of our current nosedive ad actually do it!

Stevenage Podcast

The Stevenage podcast is now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk featuring Dean Saunders, Angelis Tsiaklis and Nathan Fairhurst.

Poor Old Levi!

I know fans are divided over the merits of Levi mackin, but no matter which side of the fence you sit on over that particaular debate, surely you've got to feel sorry for the guy? Not for the first time, a chance to establish himself in the side has met with frustration.

Brian Little summed up his red card against Stevenage perfectly; it was probably the wrong decision, but Levi was rash to take that risk. Sliding in from behind is daft when you're on a yellow card already, especially considering it was the first day of the season when officials look to establish a disciplinary benchmark and the ref had already shown himself to be erratic, to put it kindly! However, he did seem to play the ball, and there doesn't seem to be much doubt that his intention was undoubtedly to do so.

However, the red card was shown, and Mackin suffers an abortive start to his season. Again.

This looked like his best chance of establishing himself as a regular in the side at last, as for four years he's been on the fringes without quite getting a foothald in the first eleven.

He had a run of seven late substitute appearances at the start of the 2005-6 season but never quite made the breakthrough into the starting line-up and faded away, despite establishing himself that season as an all-action captain of the reserves.

A similar scenario played itself out the following season, but last year it looked like a corner had been turned. He was a beneficiary of a strange team selection, but ironically his big chance was also thwarted in the same manner. Brian Carey rested most of his first team for a League Cup first round game at Port Vale and was rewarded with one of the few good performances of the season. We drew with our higher division opponents, winning on penalties, and even Richard Hope looked good! Perhaps the most notable performance came from Mackin, who bossed midfield and was rewarded with a run of starts in the team in which he showed off his key attributes of energy and tenacity to good effect and looked like he might finally be approaching that moment every pro encounters where he proves his worth or perishes.

Sadly, his cause wasn't helped by a second quixotic team selection. The reward for beating Vale was a home tie with Premiership Aston Villa, and the decision to once more rest key players was to have far-reaching, catastrophic consequences. We were hammered 5-0, the first of five consecutive defeats which, for me, triggered our dismal collapse to Conference. It was a silly, self-inflicted wound and it hurt Mackin badly.

He had established a robust partnership with Danny Williams, but Carey left the senior partner out, replacing him with Conall Murtagh. Now I rate Murtagh highly, but pairing two young lads in the centre of the park against a rampant Nigel Reo-Coker did neither of them any favours, not least because Murtagh had spent the afternoon in an exam and travelled to the game by train believing he would be a spectator! The damage to Mackin was catastrophic. His confidence looked battered and although he started the following Saturday he looked poor and was replaced with a quarter of the game left. Inevitably he lost his place in the side; after one more appearance on New Year's Day he was shipped off on loan to Droylesden.

Brian Little seems to be taken by Mackin though. Whether he gave him a few starts at the end of last season because he saw smoething in him or because he needed to establish whether he should be released we'll never know, but the manager was certainly pleased with how Mackin responded. And so, for the first time, he was in the starting line-up for the opening game of the season, but once more he was thwarted in his hopes of becoming a regular by suspension. Like Little, I've started to what Mackin can offer the side; I hope he can overcome this set-back, and start avoiding the accidents that seem to little his progress.

Borough Better Than You Think

No Wrexham fan expects us to swan into the Conference and sweep everything before us-two years of awful football have taught us not to have grand aspirations! Ironically, the 5-0 beating of the pre-season title favourites last Saturday has only reinforced that sense of respect for the Blue Square Premier.

Stevenage might have defended poorly, but their approach play was superior to virtually anything we saw in League Two last season. Their commitment to keeping the ball on the floor was admirable, although it was costly when their defenders tried to pass from the back and were pressed by an ernergetic Wrexham side which had done its homework well.

Perhaps the only area in which Borough compared poorly to Football League sides was their finishing. Despite splashing out on some established Conference strikers, they were wasteful in front of goal. Opponents last season would have punished us given the number of opportunites Borough created.

Still, their ability to move the ball around was impressive. If that's the standard we'll face this season we'll see a lot more quality football at The Racecourse over the next nine months.