Here’s my column from last week’s Leader. It forms part of the paper’s comprehensive pre-match coverage every Friday, featuring interviews, an in-depth look at the opposition and lots of statistical analysis. All content in the column (c) www.leaderlive.co.uk.

Success in football can be traced back to a variety of factors. Talent is the most crucial, of course, good fortune and opportunity are key as well, but sometimes the most important factor can be something a little more basic. Footballers are only human after all, and sometimes it helps simply to know that they are wanted.

This certainly appears to have been the decisive issue for Adrian Cieslewicz. For too long he’s been seen as a promising prospect when the fact is that he has the attributes to really hurt Conference defences. However, Andy Morrell has shown faith in his abilities and been rewarded by a series of good performances this season, capped last weekend by a match-winning effort in the top of the table clash with Forest Green.

Cieslewicz certainly seems to be revelling in the trust Morrell is showing in him. While the manager is committed to rotating his strikers, which is unlikely to be to their tastes as all players like to be starting, the fact is that Cieslewicz has certainly been getting a fairer crack of the whip than he did under Dean Saunders.

In fact, after the Forest Green match no striker had started more games than him this season: he and Danny Wright had been in the first eleven in nine of our thirteen matches, the next best being Brett Ormerod with seven and Rob Ogleby with six. Morrell, doing the decent thing, has only started in four games, even though his form suggests there’s more in the tank yet.

Morrell’s faith in Cieslewicz goes back further than this season though. The young Pole never really got a show of faith in him from the man who brought him to The Racecourse. Dean Saunders announced his new signing from Manchester City was one for the future, immediately threw him into the starting line-up, but then seemed to go cold on him.

He started the first two games of the season after he arrived, then was selected as a starter just twelve times in the subsequent 110 matches Wrexham played under Saunders. And that includes two games in the FA Trophy, when Saunders selected a second string side in an attempt to get out of the competition as quickly as possible!

Despite some eye-catching performances, like his thrilling grilling of Luton’s defence in the 2011 play-off at Kenilworth Road and a fine display leading the line in one of those FA Trophy starts, against Kidderminster, he never seemed to enjoy Saunders’ confidence. By way of contrast, Morrell has given Cieslewicz a start in thirty-three of his fifty seven games as manager.

Cieslewicz was sometimes a victim of his strengths. His pace meant he was the ideal impact substitute; the problem was that he would make a difference from the bench and, rather than be rewarded with a start, would be kept back in the hope he could be brought on and do the same again. Morrell has given him his head and has been rewarded.