Stability is fun.

I know we all enjoy doing daft, reckless things these days, like calling for the national manager’s head when he’s just got his team to its third tournament final in its history (and he was responsible for one of the other two as well), or voting for an extremist lunatic who promises to our money and jeep it for himself.

However, if you can bring yourself to go off-trend for a moment, you’ll see that sometimes keeping hold of what works can be a real virtue.

That’s certainly how it feels at Wrexham at the moment, because we’ve a stable core to our squad which is at the heart of our progress up the leagues.

That’s not to say that Phil Parkinson is standing still. Quite the opposite.

Parkinson has been refreshing his squad at each transfer window, and isn’t scared to jettison players if he feels he can introduce someone who can add to the quality of his side. Let’s be honest, Ben Tozer, Aaron Hayden and Luke Young could certainly do a good job in League One, but the manager wanted to move forwards with new personnel.

Still, there feels like there’s a solid foundation being built, in contrast to our years in the National League, when we seemed to rip the plan up every six months and try something new, with predictably disappointing results.

I had a dig around in the statistics to see if my instincts were correct, and was proven right. Stable Wrexham sides succeed, unstable ones don’t.

Lets start with the extremes. Twenty-six of the thirty-two players we used in the league last season had been with the club since last season at least. Contrast that with 2015-17, the days of Gary Mills, when the changing room was fitted with a revolving door.

He arrived in 2015 and dismantled the squad. Stalwarts like Dean Keates, Jay Harris, Louis Moult, Joe Clarke, Andy Bishop and Johnny Hunt departed, and just 8 players remained from the previous season. Our longest-serving players were Robbie Evans and Jonathan Royle, by virtue of appearances in the Welsh Cup in 2011, when we fielded a youth team in the Welsh Cup. Royle would start our second game of the season, a 3-1 win over Torquay, and never appeared for us again.

He wasn’t the only young player to be trusted by Mills, only to be instantly dismissed forever. In fact, he wasn’t even the first: Mason Watkins-Clark made his debut in the first game of the season, was subbed at half time, and never seen again. His replacement, Joel Logan, looked good, but the rest of his Wrexham career lasted 27 minutes.

And don’t get me started on poor Liam Walsh. A surprise inclusion on the bench at Woking, he came on in the 44th minute, was humiliatingly subbed 24 minutes later, and was never seen again.

The following season there was even less continuity. Mills got rid of virtually all his own signings and began the campaign with a weak-looking combination which featured just three players from the previous campaign.

Sean Newton was the only player he’d brought in in 2015 who survived the cull, and he wouldn’t survive much longer, leaving once Mills was dismissed in October. The other survivors were Evans and Mark Carrington.

Carra is the cockroach of the National League years; no matter the level of upheaval, somehow, he always survived. Let’s be honest, that’s down to his quality and adaptability, but it’s still remarkable that, amongst all the  turmoil, he survived for 8 years, appearing under 12 managerial and caretaker regimes.

Mills’ signings that season bring to mind the Simpsons song about one-term presidents:

We are the adequate, forgettable, occasionally regrettable caretaker presidents of the USA

The upheaval under Mills was nothing compared to the years either side of our relegation from the Football League. With Brian Little and Dean Saunders ripping up and starting again every transfer window, we had more players than the Tories have MPs. The three seasons in which we used the most players in league games in our history are 2006-7, 2007-8 and 2008-9.

Also in the top ten are the 2016-17 season, when Dean Keates had to swiftly reshape the squad he inherited from Mills, and the curtailed 2019-20 season, when COVID saved us from a relegation battle which might have left us in no position to catch the eye of Humohrey Ker as he compiled his list of clubs worth taking over. Keates was, once more, tidying up a mess he’d inherited from someone else that season.

It’s no surprise to see that using a high number of players in a season tends to lead to a poor campaign. We were also relegated in 1959-60, the season in which we used the most players until 1991-2. There were extenuating circumstances in the 90s though: we were mid-table, but beat Arsenal in the cup. Part of the reason why we played more players than usual was because our cup run allowed Brian Flynn to sign Tony Humes, Mel Pejic, Mark Taylor and John Paskin.

Parkinson actually used the 12th-most players in a league season as we won promotion to League One, although to be fair that was more a case of upgrading the squad as the season went on. More indicative of his approach is that the season before he used the least players of any of our National League campaigns.

Parkinson’s stability has brought results, and our only similar spell in the National League was similarly successful.

Andy Morrell’s sensible decision to not rock the boat when Dean Saunders suddenly walked out bore fruit as he set what is still a national record for the most points a side has accumulated in a season in Britain without being promoted.

Twenty-one of the thirty-one players used in that season had been with us for at least a year, Remarkably, the following season the statistics were exactly the same,

Obviously, there are factors which help Parkinson in his endeavours. Money helps, and being able to offer competitive wages allows him to tie players down.

Similarly, we’ve moved on from the days of 10-month contracts because our owners can fund long-term contracts. No more seeing our best players being poached by Forest Green for us!

Also, being part of a project helps us to retain platers. Naturally, there has been interest in Paul Mullin, and a year ago there was talk of a Saudi Arabian team being interested in him.

I’m not sure whether there was something to those stories or not: to me, they felt like convenient band-wagon jumping stories as the Saudis scoured Europe for glamorous signings.

However, whether he was offered a fortune to leave or not, I never really felt it was likely. Mullin is a magnificent player, but there are very strong factors pulling him to stay with us. Where else would he be worshipped like he is in Wrexham? Few players get to experience such adulation. And he’s a major figure in a massive US TV show. He’d have to throw that away if he leaves.

These pull factors apply to all our squad: they overwhelm the push factors and make it easier for Parkinson to protect himself from losing key players.

Parkinson and his recruitment team have been remarkably successful in the transfer market. Few of his signings have completely failed to work out. Not having much dead wood to prune obviously helps to maintain stability.

So cheers to boring old stability. It’s where the party’s at!