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.

At last we return to league action tomorrow after a lengthy break from our Skrill Premier duties.  We’ve not played a league match in four weeks, our last one being the 2-0 victory over Forest Green, and after our disappointing dismissals from both the FA Cup and the FA Trophy we’ve got to get back to the decent league form we were showing before this lengthy hiatus. We’ve won three of our last four league games, scoring eleven in the process.

We’ve only played Welling once, on the opening day of this season, and they showed in that match that they’re no pushovers.

A bright start was capped by a fine strike from the edge of the area by Joe Clarke, but Welling equalised just before the break. It took a crucial intervention from a substitute to earn us victory. After a couple of strong penalty shouts were waved away, Rob Ogleby came off the bench to finally earn us the winner with a low strike across the keeper which hit the net with just seven minutes remaining on the clock.

That would prove to be a valuable three points for us as we immediately embarked on a run of six matches without victory and slid down the table, those points the only thing stopping us from dropping into the relegation zone.

We need to address some urgent issues with our away form if we’re to maintain our recent upwards momentum in the league though. Our defensive record on the road is particularly worrying as we haven’t kept a clean sheet in an away game since we beat Gateshead 3-0 in September.

Indeed, that shut out at Gateshead was the only clean sheet we’ve achieved in twelve away games this season, and the leaky run goes back further. You have to go all the way to February to find the away clean sheet before that, so in total that’s one clean sheet kept in our last twenty games away from The Racecourse in all competitions.

Bearing that in mind it’s perhaps no surprise to find that we’ve only won five of those matches. In contrast, we’ve won thirteen home games over that period.

We need to buck an odd trend tomorrow because recently we’ve found good away league results hard to come by in December. I don’t know if it’s down to the weather or the impending festivities, but Wrexham don’t seem to enjoy being on the road in the lead-up to Christmas. We’ve lost our last three December away days and a 2-0 Boxing Day win in 2011 is the only away league win we’ve managed in December in eight matches, stretching back six years to December 2007 when we won 1-0 at Bury. Even that victory came with a bitter aftertaste as Eifion Williams scored the only goal then imped off with a career-ending injury, and we then embarked on a run of eight losses in a row which essentially cemented our relegation to the Conference!