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.

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!

Embarrassing FIFA

Kulula World Cup advertising brilliance

Nothing to do with Wrexham, but a wonderful story of taking on the corporate takeover of football. When Saturday Comes has an excellent article on this story this month, some of which is featured here. What isn't mentioned is that Kulula's latest, brilliant response to FIFA's heavy-handed approach is to copyright the sky and threaten to sue FIFA for unauthorised use of their workplace in their literature and advertising (although they're generously going to allow them to feature images of the sky below 10,000 feet!

Comic genius!!

Youth Cup Defeat

Wrexham | News | Dragon News | Dragon News | FAW Yth Final - Swans 2 Dragons 1 (Ft)

Pity this, but the result is irrelevant in some senses; the key battle lies ahead as we see whether we can actually hang onto a talented crop of lads.

Fans Lobbying to Protect Racecourse. Petition

Fans Lobbying to Protect Racecourse. Petition

Baynes Remains!

So it looks like Wes Baynes is staying. I see that as very good news, and not only because my lad has his name on the back of his shirt and wasn't terribly amused when he was released!

Baynes clearly has ability. His ability to strike the ball cleanly and his delivery from set pieces make him a useful attacking option, and he chipped in with a few handy goals in a side which struggled creatively.

Of course, it would be interesting to know just how the circumstances changed to allow Saunders to bring Baynes back into the fold. On the indispensible Red Passion's thread on his assumed return it was suggested this might represent a hitch in Saunders' recrutiment plans, the failure to snag his intended targets freeing up the funds to pay for Baynes. That's clearly a possibility, but hopefully there's another explanation.

As I've suggested previously Saunders might have saved some money with the departure of Sam Russell; if he replaces him with back-up for Chris Maxwell, then he ought to have a bit of spare chage jangling in his pocket. If that has lead to the return of Baynes, then I'd say it has worked out pretty well.

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.

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!

Loss of Russell an Opportunity for Saunders

Sam Russell’s departure is a blow to Dean Saunders, but if he’s crafty he can turn it to his advantage.

You can’t blame Russell for leaving of course. Playing second fiddle to a player nearly ten years younger than you is hardly an attractive prospect, and he was clearly disappointed when he lost his place for the run-in.

It was a decision which had to be made though. Saunders clearly wanted to give Russell every chance to establish himself. In the first four games of the season he looked impressive, but in his absence Chris Maxwell showed his quality and the decision to replace him when Russell regained his fitness was a mistake.

When Russell came back from injury he struggled to regain his earlier form, a fact which looked even worse when the inevitable comparison to the wronged Maxwell was made.

Too many times a goal could, to some extent, be attributed to him, the final straw being the last goal he conceded for us; Cambridge’s injury time equaliser from outside the box.

Also, he’d been caught out too often with the ball at his feet; his much-vaunted ability when the ball was on the ground had ironically rebounded on him. Suddenly every kick that soared out for a throw-in made him look to have feet of clay. Maxwell’s return to the team was inevitable, not to say overdue.

That’s not to say Russell’s a bad keeper; far from it. He would have been better off if he hadn’t been rushed back into the side though; I’d been told his form for the reserves wasn’t too great; perhaps he needed more time to regain his match fitness. A change will probably do him good.

Still, this is a situation which Saunders might be able to use to his advantage. The factor which has changed in the goalkeeping situation since Russell’s arrival is the emergence of Maxwell as a first choice player. While that has marginalised Russell, it also gives Saunders room for manoeuvre.

Russell, a player signed from the Football League as our first choice, would surely have been on a decent wage. If Saunders goes shopping for a back-up goalie this Summer, or maybe a young keeper on a season’s loan (but not Dean Bouzanis please!) then he can keep back a bit of money to spend on other areas of the pitch.

Time to Say Goodbye

So the long-awaited retained list is out, and inevitably there are surprises and outgoing players that some of us will be sorry to see go.

Of course Saunders promised he's cut the squad back to the bone. Indeed, he said last Saturday that he'd have to release players he didn't want to let go.

Bearing that in mind, I have to add a qualifying statement before I go on to sympathise with certain released players: the fact is we couldn't keep the same squad as we were mediocre last year at best. Changes had to be made and you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. As I've said all along, the need to break the squad up isn't disputed; the key is whether Saunders is going to recruit the right replacements. If six first team regulars are recrutied who make up the core of a good side next season, no one will look back to today with regret except those who have left.

Still, there are players I'll be sorry to see go, (and not just from a selfish point of view-Mike Williams, Spann, McCluskey and Jones are excellent post-match interviewees!)

Mike Williams is perhaps the man I feel particular sorrow for, He has never let us down and is a flexible defender. With two aging centre backs signed up for next season, one of whom has serious fitness and disciplinary problems, and Mani Assoumani unlikely to re-sign, I'd have thought he'd have been offered handy cover.

I don't suppose we can be totally shocked that Mark Jones is on the list, but that doesn't make me feel any less sorry about it. Apart from being Wrexham through-and-through, he had shown better form in the latter stages of the season and might have felt he'd done enough to earn another year. Certainly his performance at Hayes last season was as good as I'd seen from him this season. Admittedly there's perhaps an element of wishful thinking when I consider his departure; there's no doubt he has terrific talent, but I suppose I have to be hard-nosed and admit he's not going to recapture his form of four years ago.

Silvio Spann's lengthy, successful run at right back must surely have made him think a contract offer was inevitable: perhaps his lack of sustained form over the course of the last three years counted against him; probably his wages were the issue. And then there's the performance of Declan Walker on Saturday, which must surely have encouraged Saunders to believe that, with him and Kai Edwards on the books, he has adequate cover for Curtis Obeng.

I'm sad to see Wes Baynes go too. He suffered from the fact that we never really worked out the best position for him; was he a full back, striker, attacking midfielder or wing back? I hope we don't regret the loss of his set pieces, especially as we've also let Luke Holden go. I suspect it was Holden's likelihood to make hot-headed errors which could cost us that led to his release; it's surely no coincidence that the last we saw of him was his daft sending off for diving.

There was an inevitability about the departure of Sam Williamson, Hedi Taboubi, Jamie McCluskey, Nathan Fairhurst and Matty Wolfenden, although I'd have liked to have seen the latter two given more chances to show what they could do.

It's interesting to see that four of the released ten are either defenders or holding midfielders when our problem is creativity. Also, bearing in mind Saunders' suspicion that we're too lightweight, there are a lot of slight players on that list; only Williams could claim physical presence as an attribute. Let's hope he's able to shape a squad that justifies his decisions.

The curse of the player of the season trophy!

Beware the curse of the player of the season trophy!

It seems to be something of a poisoned chalice of late. Andy Fleming picks up the bauble before the Rushden game, then goes home because he’s not hanging around! Likewise, Marc Williams won it last season and hasn’t scored since, his most notable achievement since the award being a serious injury!

And the season before that? Neil Roberts became the first player of the year to be immediately released!

And it goes on: Steve Evans won it the year before and went on to score six goals from centre back in the following campaign. Unfortunately, three of them were into our own net as we were relegated from the Football League!

What an incredible sequence! Perhaps we need to vote tactically next time; if we’d picked Richard Hope two seasons ago he might have been held hostage for a year by the New Broughton Liberation front and we could have stayed up!

Taking Respomsibility

I might not agree with all Dean Saunders' decisions, but credit where credit’s due: he’s willing to face the music.

The fact that he turned up to a fans forum two days after the lowest league position in our history was confirmed is worthy of admiration. There’s absolutely no requirement for a manager to turn up and be accountable for his actions, and therefore very few do.

Only a fool could suggest that this season has gone well. Equally, a couple of weeks ago I’d have said only a fool would suggest that Dean Saunders would attend a fans forum and justify himself. Irrespective of the angle of the individual reporters, there’s an etiquette at press conferences which means major blow-ups are rare, but facing up to the fans means the gloves are off and the agenda can’t be limited.

I’m a great supporter of transparency in football clubs. I believe people should be accountable for their actions. So I’m not saying we should grovel gratefully because the manager has deigned to come down from on high and mingle with us. They ought to communicate directly with the fans (although having the people who own and run a club speak to its supporters is a much greater priority). What I am saying is that managers very rarely face up to that responsibility. I’m glad Saunders is not cut from that cloth.

Saunders could have been metaphorically torn limb from limb last night but he didn’t opt for the easy way out, and he should be applauded for that.

Reed it and Weep

As Dean Saunders prepares to tell players if they’re staying or going, he must desperately be hoping he’s making the right calls. There have been plenty of poor decisions made with respect to the players allowed to leave Wrexham in recent years, some of which are obvious and high profile. A less celebrated departure could well turn out to be the most costliest mistake of all though. Should Brian Little really have let Jamie Reed go?

There was a real risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water as Little reshaped the squad twice in the space of six months. Some players, like Matt Crowell, were dismissed before they’d really had a chance to show him what they could do, while the release of the likes of Neil Roberts beggared belief. Reed’s departure didn’t merit any headlines, but it did make me feel uncomfortable at the time.

After all, the lad was young and had time to improve. He was prolific in the reserves and for the youth team, and although he hadn’t found the net in the first team, he’d been restricted to appearances off the bench and had looked lively in those.

Admittedly he had missed some decent opportunities in those rare outings, and that might well have counted against him. For me, it was a positive though. Okay, you want to see a striker take his chances, and I understand the frustration of seeing them being frittered away when we needed something drastic to happen if we were to stay in the Football League. However, at least he was getting into those positions, and despite being a youngster his confidence wasn’t being damaged by the misses to the extent that he stopped trying to get into the danger area.

Reed won the Daily Post’s trophy for the League of Wales player of the season at the weekend, and from what I’ve seen of him on Sgorio, he deserves it. Having played a season as a winger for Rhyl, he has been a crucial creative influence in Bangor’s side this term, and has stepped up to the plate in front of goal after Chris Sharp’s departure.

I just wish he’d had the chance to develop like this with us.

Hayes Podcast

The Hayes podcast is now up at www.wrexhamfan.co.uk featuring Dean Saunders and Declan Walker.