Friday’s game has all the elements a cracking cup tie needs. Wrexham, a club with a remarkable cup-fighting pedigree are in fine form as we welcome a troubled Premier League club to The Racecourse, the big clubs’ graveyard.

The intrigue deepens when we consider how both managers will approach their team selection.

Both have strength in depth at their disposal. Phil Parkinson exploited his options beautifully over the last fortnight to develop some fantastic momentum and enjoy four consecutive wins.

Sean Dyche, meanwhile, has inherited a large group of talented players but is still looking at the best way to achieve his objectives with them.

The key objective is to escape the relegation battle which Forest’s constant managerial changes have precipitated. Does that mean he will look to heavily rotate his team?

Perhaps, and being in Europe has merely added to the burden on his squad. However, rotation would be a dangerous game to play against a marauding Wrexham team with a fierce crowd behind them.

He has the resources to switch things round. Of the 25 players they’ve registered for the Premier League this season, eighteen are full internationals, a further three are continental Under-21 champions and another was one goal off being Golden Boot in the Under-17 World Cup.

However, rotation has its risks. Even with a squad packed with class, you can’t guarantee that the sort of relationships a team thrives on will develop spontaneously.

A good coach can work on that chemistry, but Dyche hasn’t been at the County Ground long and, as The Smiths said, these things take time.

Watching Wrexham this season has proven this. We got to the last sixteen of the League Cup with a heavily-rotated team, which didn’t always look fluent, but gelled enough to get past teams which had made similar alterations.

However, when League One Cardiff came to town and picked their strongest side, we struggled to compete until we brought some big guns on off the bench.

Since then, Parkinson’s training ground work has had the desired, cumulative effect, and the last few weeks have shown that we can now switch players around without too many concerns about our cohesion suffering.

During a festive round of fixtures played over just ten days we gave sixteen different players a start, with a further three making appearances off the bench.

I think it’s fair to say the results speak for themselves.

I really don’t know what approach Parkinson will take. We’ve had the best part of a week to prepare for the match, and there is no midweek game next week either.

If he wants to, Parkinson can see this as a free hit, pick his strongest eleven and go for it. On the other hand, he could reward the players who have gone above and beyond in the last fortnight with a two week rest before returning to league action.

Not that they would see it that way; any self-respecting professional would want to take a shot at pulling off an upset, and Wrexham’s players will be champing at the bit to keep playing in a unit which is purring like they are.

Five players played every minute of those four games, while George Thomason only came off in the 90^th minute of the win at Derby. With a week’s rest, they’ll want to keep going on Friday, though.

Thankfully, this decision is in safe hands. Parkinson knows what he’s doing, knows how to handle the dynamics within his squad, and has a clear grasp of his priorities.

Parkinson can also balance the need to protect players’ fitness with the necessity of building up match fitness. If he’s ready, Kieffer Moore can return, but if that would be a risky move, there’s no problem in rewarding Sam Smith with a start. After all, he’s been outstanding since the big man’s injury.

Parkinson is a man who understands his history and makes an effort to understand the culture of the clubs he manages. He knows what Wrexham is, what makes the club tick, and what the fans want.

Bearing that in mind, I wonder whether there will be another factor in his mind when he decides his approach on Friday night.

Giant-killing is a big part of Wrexham’s DNA. Before the takeover, you might suggest it was our defining characteristic.

Under Parkinson we’ve pulled off upsets – four to be precise – but we haven’t beaten a top division side. Indeed, we haven’t managed to do that since we beat Middlesbrough in December 1999.

It’s something we used to do on an impressively regular basis in the 1970s and 1990s (We tended to reserve the 1980s for beating Europe’s elite!) If Parkinson can add that to his CV, he will have completed Wrexham, and will be able to move on to taking us into uncharted territory.