I’m enthused by the signings we’ve made in the transfer window, but let’s not forget that some true legends of the club will complete the season elsewhere.

I nostalgically cling to the thought of Elliot Lee making a triumphant return to Wrexham and adding to his legend.

Football does tend to turn up surprises, and as story arcs go, Lee adding to his catalogue of wonders in a Wrexham shirt would be quite something. However, I accept that Elliot Lee will probably continue elsewhere, and it’s important for us to recall the contribution he’s made to the club.

He is genuinely totemic, a representation of exactly what Phil Parkinson has got so right at this club. Famously, he doesn’t tolerate troublemakers, and a player’s personality is a crucial attribute he looks at when deciding whether to bring him in to the squad.

Lee exemplifies this. Let’s not forget that it was a remarkable coup when we brought him in at the start of Parkinson’s second season at the SToK Cae Ras. He was an established player in the second and third tiers, and you rather felt that the logical level for him to play at would have been the Championship.  

Yet here he was, three leagues lower down in the National League. It was an astonishing move, and the natural assumption would be that he would arrive with an ego, expecting to boss the division and be at the heart of everything we did. We soon found that it was quite the opposite. Parkinson had done his due diligence on Lee’s personality exceptionally well. 

You will recall, I’m sure, his magnificent debut, scoring two late goals to turn around a 1-0 deficit against Eastleigh on the opening day of that season. I’m sure you also recall that he came off the bench to have that impact.

Let’s just clarify. He wasn’t injured, and it wasn’t as if we’d signed him late in the window and he was still acclimatizing to the club, our methods, and our tactics.  

No. Parkinson didn’t start him for the first game and we were immediately learning that Lee was the right sort of person to help a club grow. Far from being egotistical, he’d accepted not starting the match and came off the bench to showcase what he could do. That’s not all, though.  

He started the third game of the season at Chesterfield, an early season promotion dogfight which went badly for us. There was another issue with Lee’s arrival. His natural position looked to be as a number 10 sitting behind the strikers and creating, but Wrexham didn’t set up with a player in that position.

We played an orthodox 3-5-2 with three hardworking midfielders looking to support two strikers. There was no place for an advanced playmaker.  

At Chesterfield, Parkinson looked to alter his usual formation. Lee played behind the strikers with a double pivot protecting him behind. It really didn’t work. We missed some early chances, and then the game got away from us, and we lost 2-0, and Lee was withdrawn before the hour.

In the early weeks of the season, we continued to experiment with that approach, and obviously it wasn’t a failure because we would barely drop any points that season.

However, it didn’t look right. We were still able to beat teams in the middle and low reaches of the National League, but we’d lost that fluent shape and passing rhythm which we had in the second half of the previous season.

For example, James Jones playing on the right side of the midfield three would constantly be making lung-busting overlapping runs around our right wing back to give the opposing fullback a problem as we overloaded that side of the pitch.

Now he was restricted to either sitting in midfield to give Lee more scope to go forwards or just not playing because he didn’t really fit into the double pivot profile.  

The final straw coming in a game at home to Barnet in which, I think it’s fair to say, we clicked going forward but were less coherent without the ball. We won 7-5!

Parkinson has always brought players in to fit his system, and now he was changing it. Some players now didn’t suit the new formation, though, and he had a decision to make. You might have noticed, he tends to get these big choices right rather more often than not!

What happened next doesn’t just showcase Parkinson’s leadership qualities, though. It also told you a lot about Lee’s character.

When Parkinson saw that the number 10 role wasn’t going to fit into his formation, he essentially retrained Lee to be a box-to-box number eight with a lot more defensive responsibility

If he was indeed a Championship prima donna, this was where he’d show it. Instead, he dispelled any such concerns.

Lee adapted superbly to the new role. A hard fought draw at Boreham Wood was the game when we saw him play this way. At a tough venue, Lee was constantly up and down the pitch, working his socks off for the team. 

There were still some teething pains. The defensive part of his game wasn’t what we brought him in for, but he adapted brilliantly, and the rest is history.

We all know what a remarkable force he was that season and the next, when his prolific performances helped us to deal with Paul Mullen’s absence in the first half of the campaign.

He made a similar impact on the first half of the League One season as we completed a third promotion with him in the ranks, and he’s had his moments this season in the League Cup.

Sadly, he hasn’t had a chance in the league, but in dropping from number 10 to number eight, but he flew up the charts of our estimation.