Phil Parkinson illustrated on Tuesday that a little lateral thinking can work wonders. 

As everyone obsessed over our need for more creativity from midfield, the win over Grimsby suggested that Parkinson had come up with a solution by looking at the question from a different direction.  

Rather than look for midfield invention, he’s simply shifted the onus to other parts of the pitch.

Before going any further though, I should say that doubts about our current midfield are a little overstated. The unit of Luke Young, Jordan Davies and James Jones has settled well, and it’s unfair to suggest they are moribund creatively. After all, Davies is already in double figures for the season, and 19 of our 55 goals have come from midfielders.

Hindered by the restrictions of the transfer windows, we’ve had to build our team in instalments, altering its balance as we’ve gone along.

I’ve already talked about how we have added a cutting edge to the side by changing the nature of our wing backs, selecting two real sprinters in Reece Hall-Johnson and Bryce Hosannah and becoming a team which creates chances by attacking at pace down the flanks. 

We saw Parkinson’s commitment to that approach on Tuesday when, rather than fall back on a more cautious option, he chose Liam McAlinden to replace the injured Hosannah. 

I’m not aware of McAlinden ever playing at wing back before, and it’s fair to say that while he’s shown admirable battling qualities, his defensive positioning and sensibilities are at best unproven.

However, Parkinson threw him into the role for a high stakes game on Tuesday, having seen him perform a terrific cameo off the bench on Saturday at Yeovil, and he was rewarded for his boldness.

McAlinden was magnificent in the first half, terrorising a young, on loan full back who looked a little wet behind the ears. He faded in the second half, understandably as he’d managed just 66 minutes on the pitch in our last 13 games. However, he dug deep and managed to complete the full ninety minutes for the first time since early November.

If McAlinden is able to deliver on the defensive side of the role, we might have unearthed an unexpected option to augment the attacking width which has been driving our excellent run over the last three months.

That shift of creative emphasis to the flanks has been given another interesting tweak with the arrival of Ollie Palmer. His scoring record isn’t spectacular, but that’s not really the point. After all, we’ve got Paul Mullin to do that!

Palmer does weigh in with his fair share of goals, but there are other qualities which recommended him as a good fit in Parkinson’s plan. 

He holds the ball up well, and showed on Tuesday he can stay calm in front of goal. It might have looked like a simple six-yard box finish, but the ball came to him as a deflected shot, not a pass, so he had to take the pace of it with his first touch. Having done that adroitly, he calmly slotted the ball into a gap beyond the reach of the two players on the line.

However, we didn’t get a good look at the quality which makes him a potential game-changer for Wrexham. His vision is his greatest attribute, as he’s very aware of movement around him. He likes to try the killer pass, and while he might not always succeed, if he keeps trying to open defences up, he’ll create plenty of chances.

Taking that into consideration, you can see how he’s an attractive option for Parkinson. With Mullin making intelligent runs in front of him, and overloads being created on the flanks, Palmer can be the advanced playmaker who provides that final pass.

Of course, if we sign Tony Kroos on Monday, I’ll happily scrap all that!