Can we talk about how we talk about football?

We try to pigeon hole everything in our lives. Our desire to label and categorise means every film must have a genre, every band must fit into a musical category, and every footballer has to fulfil a cliché.

Short goalkeepers are “good shot-stoppers”, when in truth every keeper needs to be that; hard-working midfielders aren’t expected to be good passers; and strikers like Thomas are immediately classed as target men. Thomas also fulfils another cliché: he’s “good with his feet for a big man.”

That last point ignores decades of “big men” who were good with their feet. Virgil Van Dijk comes to mind: 6’ 5” but hardly a donkey! The distance between your brain and the end of your legs is not a determining factor when it comes to technical quality.

I wish it was, because I’m not particularly tall, yet I accept the reality. Harry Kane, Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Busquets are all considerably taller than me, but I’m not considerably more skilful than them. Far from it: my first touch is so bad, it’s impossible to tell if I’m trying to control the ball or play a long pass!

Thomas is a terrific asset for the side. His ability in the air is obvious: I’m struggling to think of a Wrexham centre forward of recent years who wins such a high percentage of aerial duels with the centre backs when we go long. So we assume he’s a target man.

There’s so much more to him than that, which is why he’s already scored more goals this season for us than anybody since Chris Holroyd three seasons ago.

Consider the nature of the goals he scores. Most have them have come from close range, attacking a driven cross. He’s not scoring headers, he’s scoring tap-ins.

When we consider a player who specialises in these types of goal, we fall back on clichés again. The “fox in the box”, the “six-yard box striker”. In our minds they are nippy little players like Michael Owen or Juan Ugarte.

That perception is inaccurate though. Not only is Thomas prodigious in the air, but he attacks the goalmouth better than any Wrexham striker I can think of since Ugarte.

Look at the nine goals he has scored this season. Five of them were 6-yard box finishes, only one of which was with his head (and that was the closest range chance of all, against Wealdstone).

He has two other headed goals, but one was due to predatory instincts more than his ability to attack crosses, as he anticipated a defender’s header back to the goalkeeper.

As Thomas seeks the goal which will make him the first Wrexham player since Holroyd to reach double figures in a season, we can count ourselves lucky to have a player who defies definition up front.