I'm Right Naive Me!

As Reeves and Mortimer used to say "I'm right naive me".

You see, I assumed that when a bid to buy a business is turned down, it's because a better plan has been submitted by someone else. Judging by the last few days, perhaps that's not always the case.

The WST were, of course, the losers in the bidding process for Wrexham Football Club. They were rejected, according to Geoff Moss, on two grounds: a lack of experience in running a football club and a financial inability to fund it in the medium term.

As a key tenet of the WST's bid was that they would appoint professionals to run the club, the argument that they could not do the job as "the people who run the Trust all have full time jobs" is surely irrelevant. And as for the lack of a financial plan, well if the thoroughy professional pitch, supported by a top table packed with experience in running football clubs, made in the William Aston Hall wasn't good enough, then Jon Harris' must have been stunning! Considering the fact that he seems to have nothing in his background to suggest he's worth more than the trust, he must be able to sell icecubes to eskimos! And we all know he's operating alone, apart from the odd expert advisor, of course.

And there's the strange thing. It seems Geoff Moss has, since opting for Harris' bid, has asked for funding from the trust. That seems a bit like Simon Cowell picking Leona Lewis as his winner and then asking the runner-up to sing us out! But wasn't Harris' bid water-tight? Didn't it contain sufficient funds to provide for the club's medium and long term future? And isn't long term future what the Centre of Excellence is all about?

I know there's been a funding gap at Colliers Park since the Football League's money dried up. I also know that it's sometimes hard to get people to invest in the future when they're fixated with the present, something football fans are more guilty of than most. But I also know that if you want to raise funds, it helps if you have credibility. If there's one body which fans are happy to give their money to, it's the trust. Pity they weren't in a position to run the club and tap into that deep well of goodwill, eh?

But like I said, I'm naive. I'd have thought the sheer professionalism of the WST bid, its moral mission to give something back to the community, and its enhanced financial potential as a result of the goodwill the trust enjoys, would have made it a very attractive bid. Yet it turns out a bidder who's begging for funds before the contract's even been signed is more attreactive. Like I said, I'm right naive, me!

The Long Summer Begins

So now the football season is over, and the real action begins.

What's happening now is far more important than whether we go up or not at the end of a long season of endeavour. It's about the long-term future of the club, and indeed whether it has a future or not.

While the armchair fans have been enjoying the drama of the last day of the Premiership season, we've also seen a weekend of remarkable drama as the Dismal Jimmies paid a visit to Colin Poole, a man who seems happy to make it plain to everyone that he's the power behind Jon Harris' throne despite the fact that he's legally precluded from such a position.

Poole is the latest in a long line of suitors for the club who have a history which is less than saintly. In fact, stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't the WST bid the only one which isn't backed by at least one person who is currently banned from acting as a company director?

The reaction to their visit was highly illuminating. Let's get something straight: I'd never condone the actions of anyone who broke the law or acted in an intimidating way; even if they felt their target deserved it, behaving like that means they stoop to their enemies' level.

However, there's been absolutely no suggestion that the Dismal Jimmies did anything illegal or intimidating; they attended what appears to be a public event and there's no report that they were threatening in their behaviour. Yet they report that Wrexham fans were characterised as "peasants" by Poole's wife, who exhorted her husband to bankrupt the club in a manner which suggested this was something which had already been discussed.

It would have been a massive PR disaster for Poole in other circumsances: quite apart from the alleged bankruptcy threat, it would be easy to present this as a case of the landed classes looking down their noses at the grubby oiks who support football teams and disrupt their cosy lives. Yet there won't be any PR repercussions from this: the mainstram media are unlikely to pick it up, and anyway, football isn't a democracy: the club has been sold to whoever the owners fancied as their successor. Public opinion didn't come into it.

There has been some crucial fall-out from the affair, although it's difficult to interpret. A purported press release from Harris has appeared on Red Passion, claiming to reveal that Poole has withdrawn his backing. Heaven knows if the press release is genuine, and if it is, whether it's a sincere message or a smokescreen to deter further interventions into Poole's private life. If it is genuine, the Dismal Jimmies' intervention has clearly had a dramatic effect.

It's hard to imagine Poole would get cold feet so easily though. Having surfaced, sunk and bobbed up again during the bidding process, surely he wasn't put off by this incident; indeed if he'd done his research he must have expected it. More likely he's retreating into the background, as you'd think a banned director would have done in the first place, in the hope of returning to the easy life.

We'll soon know the truth, because if Poole's money has gone Harris' bid surely collapses. Should Poole actually withdraw his support, we're back to square one, except that the WST now know that they can afford the club if they set £1 aside from their funds!

The Mystery of the Cup

Isn't it wonderful to live in a world where technology allows us to obtain all sorts of arcane information in a mere moment, and modern corporations are committed to transparancy? Well, you do if you're in The Premiership.

I've been trying to work out who we could draw in the FA Cup tomorrow, and it's impossible! There's absolutely nothing on the internet telling you whether the sides that won in the third qualifying round over the weekend will be in the northern or southern sections of the draw, or which Blue Square Premier sides are in our half.

The FA's website has lots of information, but no answers on who we're going into the draw with. After spending ages trying to work it out, I decided to ask Wrexham's secretary Geraint Parry, working on the basis that he knows absolutely EVERYTHING. But he hadn't been given a definitive list from the FA either!

His list tallied with what I suspected would be our half of the draw (I did eventually find a website which said which of the weekend's games had been in the northern half, although Geraint pointed out that sometimes the FA will take teams from one half and put it into the other in the next round!)

We reckon there'll be twelve teams from the Blue Square Bet Premier for us to avoid;
Gateshead
Darlington
Barrow
Southport
Fleetwood
York City
Grimsby Town
Altrincham
Mansfield Town
Wrexham
Tamworth
Kidderminster Harriers

However, the way the draw has been split hasn't been too cruel to us: most of the sides at the top of the table are in the southern section. As for the other clubs, it looks like these are the sides who'll go into the draw with us, with the sides who are going to be in a replay in bold.

One league below us:

AFC Telford United

Guiseley

Workington

Eastwood Town

Nuneaton Town

Solihull Moors

Droylsden

Corby Town

Stalybridge Celtic

Vauxhall Motors

Redditch United

Two leagues below us:

Buxton

FC United of Manchester

North Ferriby United

Frickley Athletic

FC Halifax

Three leagues below us:

Mossley

Barwell

Newcastle Town

Sheffield

Three leagues below us:
Lincoln Moors Railway
Tipton Town

Four leagues below us:
Radcliffe Olympic

Fancy Lincoln Moors Railway at home?

The Tactical Season So Far...

With roughly a quarter of the season now gone, it feels like an appropriate time to take stock of where exactly Wrexham stand, not least bearing in mind the fact that there was some pressure on Dean Saunders at the start of the campaign to get early results.

So far the season has split into three distinct periods. Saunders started the campaign playing the sort of 4-2-3-1 formation which is so popular at the top end of the game. However, he added his own particular twist by pushing the wide players as far up the pitch as he could get away with, turning it into essentially a 4-2-1-3.

It was made even more of an attacking approach by the fact that the man behind the front three was David Brown, who was clearly in the side for his creative capacities, not his tracking back.

Of course, Saunders’ motives for playing this way were clear. Last season we struggled to break teams down; this time he was determined we wouldn’t lack for attacking options.

The system worked well...on the first day. Defeats at Forest Green and Eastbourne sent Saunders back to the drawing board as the approach just seemed a little too progressive for away games.

His solution took us into the second tactical phase of the season. Saunders’ response to those reverses was to shore things up by putting Christian Smith into a defensive role in front of the back four, replacing the man behind the front three in a 4-1-2-3. It led to our most consistent form of the season so far, as the role of defensive midfielder suits Smith best. He can destroy with his size and strength, and his long passing allows him to launch counter attacks from deep.

However, there was still a problem. We never lost playing that way, but we drew too often, and the York game raised the question of whether it would allow you to get at the opposition in home matches.

Saunders abandoned the formation after half an hour and snatched a point, partially because he was extremely bold, snatching the initiative back not through adding bolstering the defence but by hurling on attacking substitutes to drive York back.

This led to his third, radical phase of the season. He switched back to 4-2-1-3 but with a twist. The wide roles would be filled by strikers while Jamie Tolley would be asked to shuttle between midfield and attack. It was a very progressive tactic, clearly aimed at turning draws into wins. However, the results it has yielded have been mixed; it has earned impressive home wins against weak opposition, but looked stretched in away games.

Addressing this, Saunders actually reverted to the "Christian Smith system" at Darlington, but with Chris Blackburn in the holding role. Whether he's better equipped than Smith to play that role's a moot point, but the fact remains that Wrexham haven't lost this season when they've started the game playing that method.

Perhaps we need to take the Christian Smith route on the road and the Jamie Tolley line at The Racecourse. Whatever Saunders decides, it’s fair to say we’re in a better state than we were last year – at least he’s now found a way of breaking sides down at home – but he must now find a way to consolidate our improvement.

Taylz of the Unexpected

Who'd have thought it? You might think we're the eternal fall guys, but we completely out-manouevred our more illustrious adversaries to pull off a coup over Neil Taylor's transfer fee!

Crucially, the case never went before the wise old heads who adjudicate on such matters; if it had, I can't help suspecting we wouldn't have got such a decent deal.

These tribunals, determined by reference to formulae rather than market value, don't seem to favour the selling clubs very often. They don't tend to follow logic either. That's why we cleverly ensured it didn't go that far.


Wrexham have played this one by the book, and in the end they made Swansea blink first with the weight of their logic. If City had maintained their brinkmanship and taken it to tribunal, they might well have got Taylor on the cheap. Surely they were reluctant to take that chance because, in these financiallly straightened times, if you suddenly get told to cough up more than you've budgetted for, you can get badly burnt.

Wrexham drew on their contacts wisely. Their case was compiled with the help of those who've negotiated far larger fees in the biggest of football's markets. They were restricted by the guidelines of the tribunal, but were advised well. Although they put their argument together according to the rules, they ensured that what would be deemed an irrelevant argument in the committee room had been given a decent airing before things got that far.

The unwitting key witness in this case was Bristol City's Albert Adomah. He moved there in the Summer from Barnet, the tribunal setting his fee at £150,000. Swansea's offer for Taylor was considerably less than that; a derisory bid which added to an uneasy feeling that they'd exploited their superior status to make this deal happen.

This is where the multiple withdrawals from Wales' Summer friendly in Croatia played beautifully into our hands. They might have been the final straw which drove John Toshack to resignation, but as he scrambled round for players willing to represent their country, he called up Taylor, who came off the bench to make his debut.

Now Wrexham had a strong argument, albeit one they couldn't use in the tribunal. If Adomah was worth £150,000, what should a full international fetch? The rules stated they couldn't present this as part of their case, but they could at least plant the seed in Swansea's mind. What if the committee followed that logic? What would City be forced to pay out? Faced with this thought, they cracked at the eleventh hour.

Throughout this deal, from first contact between buying club and player, they held all the aces. But ultimately they lost the upper hand, and Wrexham came out, having out-bluffed them, with a tidy little sum. £150,000 to be precise. Wonder how they arrived at that figure?

Room For Racchi?

I know the budget's tight. I know we've got a lot of midfield choices. But did we miss out on Danny Racchi?

The reason I ask is that I'm one of the sad ones who has coughed up for a subscription to Premium Sports. Yes, I'm one of the rare few who are willing to pay to watch fifth division football that doesn't feature the team I support. I try to justify it by telling myself that the cost for a month is about the price of half a ticket to a Conference game. Then I stick my fingers in my ears in the hope that I won't be able to hear the logical side of my brain's reply.

Anyway, Racchi was playing on Premium TV for York City earlier this week. And he looked good.

I must admit that I didn't see his performances in our pre-season friendlies as I went on holiday instead (There, I chose going on holiday over watching meaningless uncompetitive games. I do have some perspective!) However, I'm told he looked useful. Dean Saunders must have agreed as he kept him on, at least on non-contract terms.

I was also told he was a winger. Maybe so, but what I saw on TV suggested he's much more than that. He's a feisty midfielder who can strike the ball, as was proven by a couple o flong distance near-misses. He's also confident enough to have a go from free kicks, and although he got nowhere near as close when he hit a dead ball, it says something of his confidence that he's got himself to the front of the queue on set pieces so soon after arriving at the club. For a little guy, he's no mug in the air either.

I'd be stupid to draw lasting conclusions on him from watching one game. However, if I'd seen him play like that in a friendly I'd have been clamouring for us to keep him on. Wonder if he's likely to give us a second go if York's new manager doesn't take a shine to him?

That Familiar Feeling

Am I alone in feeling edgy about today's game?

Kettering's home form over the last ten months is dismal: played 19 won 2 drawn 6 lost 11. Let's be honest; recent experience makes it virtually inevitable that they beat us!

Also, after what by all accounts was a frank squad meeting, provoked by their awful start to the season, they might just be ready to throw themselves into the game today. Of course, that sort of rejuvenated spirit can't be sustained; you can't paper over the cracks if your team isn't good enough. However, it can give you a short term boost. I remember going to Chesterfield a few years ago when they'd lost their previous game 7-0. Their manager, Roy McFarlane, had hit the roof in order to get a reaction from his players. You don't need me to tell you who won, do I?

Then, of course, you throw in the Ashley Westwood factor. If ever there was a driven player, here he is. And he'll be gunning for us! It should be quite interesting, remembering his penchant for getting involved in aggravation (something he has sustained at Kettering, he has been involved in two mass brawls already this season, and was named by his local paper as being the joint cause of one of them!) i was thinking that if we keep our eyes peeled we'll probably work out who he didn't like in the changing room last season, until I remembered that there's barely anyone left at The Racecourse from last season!

Hunt Shows His Character

I was talking in my Leader column last week about character, and I thought that quality was evident again on Saturday. This time it was Johnny Hunt who showed his appetite for a challenge, and in the most admirable of ways.

I’ve seen young players crushed by a rough ride like Peter Till gave him in the first half of the York match. Till’s a good winger and Martin Foyle admitted after the game that he’d used the knowledge that young Hunt would be thrown in at left back, switching Till’s flanks to attack him.

The tactic worked a treat. Wrexham’s starting formation doesn’t really afford much cover for the full backs as our wide players are encouraged to push up the pitch. It was something Newport threatened to exploit in the opening fifteen minutes the week before, but by taking control of the midfield we nullified the threat.

That same solution wasn’t to be forthcoming against York. Till beat Hunt regularly in the first half hour, and when the youngster lunged rashly in, desperately trying to halt his tormenter, Till skipped past him and drilled the ball home to equalise.

Meanwhile, Christian Smith, whose presence in front of the back four has been so important in the last couple of games, found himself constantly rushing across to try to help Hunt, leaving a gap which York’s midfield runners looked to exploit. Till’s threat was pulling our formation all over the place.

Dean Saunders reacted by changing to a 4-4-2 to give Hunt some protection, but equally crucially, Hunt refused to be cowed by his experience. As a child he clearly had the message drummed into him that if you fall off your bike you get straight back on and try again!

His efforts in continuing to challenge Till were admirable. Rather than go to pieces he kept scrapping away, and slowly he began to work him out. Admittedly, having Nat Knight-Percival drop back to double up with him helped, but the way Till’s threat was nullified wasn’t purely down to that. In the second half, when Saunders wanted to push on and go for a win, he was able to return Knight-Percival to a more attacking position, secure in the knowledge that Hunt had learned how to deal with Till, and when their individual battle was resumed Hunt won it hands down.

The ability to recover which Hunt showed, and which I mentioned last week in relation to Scott Shearer, encourages me. There were times last season when I felt the team knew the weight of fortune was against them, and they failed to fight against it. If things didn’t go their way there was a sense that they would accept it as their fate. They couldn’t drop the culture of failure.

This side, not only through the examples I’ve given, but through those of relentless old stagers like Andy Morrell and Dean Keates, and curmudgeons like Neil Ashton, who take any form of failure as a personal slight, are just what the squad needed. It’s not just the quality of the players in a squad which make it succeed or fail; it’s the quality of the men.

Newport Podcast

Just uploaded the Newport podcast to the Wrexham Supporters Association's website featuring Dean Saunders, Andy Mangan and Dean Holdsworth

Who Benefits From International Experience?

Another superb result for Brian Flynn's Under-21s today, who are again in with a great shout of getting to the European finals, but what does it do for us?

With Chris Maxwell keeping a clean sheet and Marc Williams playing for the first hour up front, it's natural to be proud, but another play in the starting line-up naturally makes me think twice.

Neil Taylor played too, so forgive me for pointing out that neither of the current Wrexham players can get into our side, and maybe Taylor would have stayed if he'd been a regular too.

Of course, that's a cheap shot, but I it's also a fair concern. It's good indicator of the talent coming through our academy that our players can go to a pressured envronment and perform; getting such experience is a massive boost in their development.

At the same time it's a worry that the experience they gain in such matches might be for the benefit of their new clubs, not us. I know it's hard to hang onto young talent when you're in the fifth division, but if we're to turn the club around we've surely got to hang onto the youngsters we produce, either to get the most out of them on the pitch or to get a decent fee for them once they've matured.

It's hard to see why Maxwell would want to stay when his contract's up in the Summer if he doesn't break through into the first team, and Williams is hardly being made to feel welcome is he? So their exploits abroad are merely putting them in the ship window, while toughening them up for their next employers, I fear.

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.

The Passion of Scott Shearer

If it's August, it mustt be time to debate whether Chris Maxwell or his more experienced rival ought to be our number one keeper. In fact, that's not true: it seems to be a permanent debate, not a seasonal one!

Last season Sam Rusell got off to a good start to the season, but once Maxwell took his place it was plain to most observers that he was the more reliable keeper. Saunders' recall for Russell, who never looked as secure as he did before that unpleasant injury against Kettering, was premature to say the least, and after a costly error against Cambridge Maxwell was restored and Russell never appeared for us again.

Of course, Saunders would have liked him tohave stayed. Understandably, Russell turned down a contract in the summer; after all, why would a keeper want to play second fiddle to one ten years his junior? Saunders' problem as he looked for a replacement was simple: that very question no doubt hung in the air whenever he spoke to a potential new goalie. Clearly Shearer would want an assurance before he committed to us that he wouldn't be signing up for a spell on the bench at a non-league club.

Naturally he started the season as Number One, and enjoyed an impressive clean sheet on debut. However, he looked nervous in the subsequent matches at Forest Green at Eastbourne: edgy when coming for high balls in the former match and setting his defensive line too deep for set pieces in the latter as he looked to stay on his line as much as possible.

That led to the remarkable sight, half an hour into the game, of debutant Marvin Andrews giving him a very public lecture on his resonsibilities, with the rest of the back four chipping in. It could hardly have helped his confidence a great deal, and so he was set up for last Tuesday.

His part in one of Kidderminster's goals led to an angry reaction from some Wrexham fans, who gave him a hard time both on the pitch and in the car park afterwards. There's just no justification for abusing a player, and it was uplifting to see him bounce back against Barrow, making a superb save at 1-0 which kept us in the game and allowed us to snatch a point in injury time.

Equally pleasing was the reaction of the fans in the Eric Roberts Stand after the save. In chanting his name they sent a clear message to Shearer; he's one of ours and we will back him. Fortunately, it was a good game for Shearer to rebuild his confidence, as with Barrow so defensive there was little scope to test the areas he has been criticised for; instead, it was his shot-stopping which was examined, and that's his strong suit.

Dean Saunders admitted after the Barrow game that he'd considered putting Maxwell back in; no doubt the fact that the young keeper is unavailable at Newport next Sunday might have been a factor in keeping faith in Shearer.

For what it's worth, I'm a fan of Maxwell's and, like last season, think we'd be best served by having him between the posts. Furthermore, with his contract up at the end of the season we'd be well advised to keep him sweet or there's no chance he'll stay on. However, I'd like to think we're the sort of club that welcomes players rather than shuns them if they lose form. The phrase "Cauldron of Hate" was used on the excellent Red Passion podcast to describe the atmosphere at the Kidderminster game; it was a tongue-in-cheek comment, but let's not let it come true.

Cambridge Audio Highlights

The audio highlights of the Cambridge match are now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk.

Cambridge Podcast

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

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.

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.

No Surprises

This seems to me to have been the most predictable of pre-seasons.

I seem to recall spending many a July desperately trying to work out just how Wrexham's manager would field a balanced side from the lop-sided bunch he'd assembled, but this time round the starting eleven for next Saturday seems to be North Wales' worst kept secret!

I might be proven embarrassingly wrong just before we take to the field against Cambridge, but it seems that, barring injury, there's only really one position which seems to have some doubt attached to it, and that's due to the volatile transfer market more than anything else.

Apart from the question of who will play at the back alongside Chris Blackburn, as Frank Sinclair waits to see if this much-touted higher division loanee will come and rain on his parade, it already seems cut and dried: Shearer in goal, Walker and Ashton at full back, Gall, Harris, Keates and Knight-Percival across the middle and Morrell and Mangan up front.

If that's the case, I feel a little sorry for David Brown. He looks an interesting player to me, but he's the one who perhaps will find it hard to find a slot in the side in its current configuration. I know looking for significance in a friendly's a mug's game, but I thought he had an excellent half at Aberystwyth when he was at the sharp end of a midfield diamond. Following our lack of penetration last season, it was nice to see a couple of players who could pass the ball around in our midfield, with Keates sweeping long balls from back of midfield and Brown looking to feed clever little passes into the channels from higher up the pitch.

The problem for Brown, I suspect, is he's perhaps not quite cut out to play as an outright midfielder, at least not in a central pairing of two. His inclination is surely to play higher up the field, but at the moment Saunders seems to have settled with a rather straightforward 4-4-2 after some interesting tactical experimentation at the start of the friendlies.

Previously Saunders' variation on this shape has been a 4-3-3 with the likes of Baynes or Cieslewicz offering width, and with Morrell and Mangan surely the established front duo, it's hard to see how either set-up could help Brown to break into the team in an advanced position.

Kevin Gall has interested me in pre-season. It appears he'll get first go at playing wide on the right, although he's capable of being used as a striker too. However, if you check out his career strike rate you'll see why he's been forced to adapt to a more wide position as his career has progressed.

That's the facet of his game I'm inclined to focus on in the next few weeks as well. I like his movement and pace; he's clever and pops up unexpectedly where you want to see him. However, he hasn’t really looked likely to take the chances that his mobility might present to him. Furthermore, he doesn't look to have the physical presence to challenge at the far post when crosses come in, a great shame when on the other flank we have three players capable of swinging the ball into good effect in Nat Knight-Percival, Neil Ashton and Johnny Hunt.

The other remarkable thing to consider if that is the side Saunders picks, of course, is that it would feature only two players from last season if he gets his central defensive target: Mangan, who arrived at Christmas, and Walker, who made his debut on the last day of the season! Plus ça change, eh?

More Of This Please Mister Keates

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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.