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.

There was a photo posted on Twitter recently which warmed the heart and offered an insight into one of the great intangibles which go towards forging a good football team.

It came from Dean Keates, and was a picture of his little lad at home in a Wrexham kit. The message attached explained that he could have had a Manchester United shirt instead, but chose Wrexham because he wanted to be like his daddy.

It was a lovely, touching image and sentiment, and it also said something about what Andy Morrell is looking to achieve at the club. By maintaining a sound, established core to his squad, he is building for success.

While football is an itinerant lifestyle, with players regularly whisked off to another club or demanding a move at the drop of a hat, Keates certainly appears to be making a real attachment with the club. The very fact that Wrexham will always be a shared memory in his family, not least because of his son’s choice of shirt, illustrates that. It can only be good for the club if it engenders such attachments.

It’s nice to see this developing, and it’s an indicator of how things have turned around at The Racecourse. When we were sliding out of the Football League the opposite happened. The board sanctioned the wild slash-and-burn approach of Brian Little, and then a couple of total rebuilds by Dean Saunders, and there were few survivors. As a result we equalled or broke the club record for most players used in a season for three consecutive years. It was a total mess, and the results reflected that.

The value of a settled side is pretty obvious. A manager gets to work on structures and tactics, and player become familiar with his methods and intentions. Players begin to form relationships on the pitch and combination play becomes more fluid and natural.

However, there’s another important element to this. Stability in the playing staff allows attachments to be made by the players, and it follows that the more they associate with the club, the better their performances will be.

There are no Arfon Griffiths-style club stalwarts at The Racecourse: the clear-outs Brian Little and Dean Saunders carried out saw to that. Amazingly, our longest-serving player is Adrian Cieslewicz. However, there is a hard core of players who have are embarking on their third tilt at promotion with us, and that solid foundation looks well settled.

Whether it’s Keates’ son choosing a Wrexham shirt, Mark Creighton, who already has links with the area through his better half, opening a tattoo parlour, or the playing staff having their wages paid by the fans and being given a concrete link between the support they receive and their day-to-day lives beyond people saying hello to them in the street, it’s a valuable bond which is growing between the squad and the institution. You can only measure that relationship in one way: by looking at the league table.