I can’t deny that the unorthodox nature of our pre-season did cause me a little concern. Then I read Richard Sutcliffe’s remarkable article in The Athletic on the level of detail which was devoted to supporting the players’ well-being and I felt remarkably reassured.

The architect of Wrexham’s preparation for our first trans-continental adventure is Kevin Mulholland. When he was appointed as our Head of Performance, Medicine and Sports Science it felt like a genuine coup: his background and experience certainly didn’t tally with the profile of a National League target. If his meticulous plans bear fruit, he could prove to be man of the match on Saturday.

It wasn’t just the rigour of travel which concerned me. It seemed a little odd that none of the players on the US tour played a full 90 minutes, as the jaunt represented the last chance to get ready for Saturday’s opener. Reading about Mulholland’s detailed approach to match preparation made me feel rather more comfortable. Backed by the football smart of Phil Parkinson and Steve Parkin, there’s no doubt the issue of minutes in the legs has been managed carefully: indeed, with a relentless schedule awaiting the team in the opening exchanges of the season – we squeeze 5 games into the first fortnight – it might be no bad thing to taper towards the start of the campaign, saving something back for when those fixtures really feel like they’re piling up.

It’s an approach you sometimes see in the build-up to cycling’s grand tours. Three weeks of pushing yourself to the limit is gruelling, to say the least, and sometimes riders will start a race a little under-cooked in order to ride themselves into form as the opening week unfolds.

As evidence, I give you the winners of the Critérium du Dauphiné, one of the two traditional warm-up race for the Tour de France. Since 1995 there have only been 5 occasions when the winner has gone on to win the Tour, and even those occasions suggest something unusual was going on: four of those winners were riding for Team Sky, whose meticulous approach to “marginal gains” reminds me of a certain North Walian club’s approach to extreme physical situations!

In case you were wondering, the other traditional preparation race, the Tour De Suisse, has an even worse record, with just one winner within the same timescale. And the other winner of the Critérium was Jonas Vingegaard this year: anyone who saw his performance last month will know that the limitations of the human body just don’t apply to him!

There’s no guarantee of a positive result in football, but I defy anybody to read Sutcliffe’s article and not feel the Wrexham team have enjoyed the advantages of a thorough programme of support which is unheard of outside the top level of sport. Mulholland is our secret weapon, and his department’s work is a superb example of the quiet revolution Rob and Ryan have funded. Marginal Gains? Nah: Extensive Gains, more like.