Josh Windass is rather good, isn’t he? 

As the stakes reach their highest, Windass has the steely gaze of a born winner. 

His winner on Tuesday was pure quality, but that’s hardly a surprise. His consistency under pressure is remarkable. 

Let me take you back to The Hawthorns. Windass struck a superb goal to pull us back into a match which we trailed by two goals to West Brom, and the wonderful thing about it was the glorious inevitability of it. 

When the ball was laid back into his path, it was certainly a chance, but he was outside the penalty area with players between him and goal. 

No problem, he drilled the ball cleanly past the goalkeeper as if it was nothing to write home about.  

In fact, it wasn’t: he is incredibly consistent at that range thanks to his terrific technique. When he hits the ball, it stays hit. The ice running through his veins just adds to his talents. 

That’s all part of the attraction of Windass. He makes the extraordinary seem mundane and celebrates with barely a flicker of a smile.  

Indeed, sometimes he seems downright annoyed to have scored: when he struck an extraordinary injury time equaliser at QPR he looked positively furious and plenty of onlookers jumped to the conclusion that he was unhappy at the club. 

Quite the reverse: this guy is as cool as they come, and the more sensational the goal, the more likely it is that he’ll barely react. It was just another day at the office, after all. 

Windass is such an instinctive player, marrying terrific game intelligence with a profound feel for the game. Those of you who follow Wrexham through the streams of the game are missing out on something, because being in the stadium gives you a different perspective on what he’s all about. 

Watching his movement off the ball is an education. He drifts around, searching for areas of the pitch where he can do damage, sniffing out space and matching his movements to those of his teammates.  

It’s a beautifully co-ordinated dance, conducted by Phil Parkinson and his coaching staff on the training pitch and put into action by a skilled performer.  

The Germans have a beautiful word for such a player, coined in honour of the unique talents of Bayern Munich legend Thomas Müller. A “raumdeuter” is literally a “space interpreter” or “Space investigator”. Windass is cut from a similar cloth. 

It doesn’t seem right to judge such a player on his numbers, when it’s his feel for the game which sets him apart. However, those statistics are telling. 

Take that goal at West Bromwich. As I said, it felt inevitable once the ball dropped to him because his consistency from the edge of the area is gloriously monotonous. 

However, the statistics tell us otherwise. That goal had an xG of 0.06. To put it another way, analysis of millions of games and billions of different game situations tells us that a player receiving the ball in that position and in that manner scores six times out of a hundred. 

Yet when that player is Windass, the odds don’t matter. 

He exceeded that achievement when he drove the ball home at Oxford last Tuesday, another crucial goal from outside the box. That one was expected to go in five times out of every hundred. 

His expected goal figure for his winner at Sheffield United was 0.12; against Southampton it was 0.14. 

To look at those recent goals another way, the probability of him scoring all four from those situations is roughly one in 208! (If you want a sense of how reliable that figure is, I’m obliged to add that I studied A level Statistics, but it was a long time ago!) 

His fifteen league goals this season are the most he’s scored in a campaign in the second tier, and the most any Wrexham player has managed at this level. Six goals in his last five starts tells you something about how he copes when the going gets tough. 

It also speaks of Parkinson’s ability to get the best out of his players. He has nudged Windass higher up the pitch, closer to the other striker, and puta more orthodox three-man midfield in behind him rather than the box midfield which has served us so well this season, just when we seem to be getting fewer rewards out of that shape. 

Consequently, Windass has been getting into the danger area more often. And, as I think I’ve illustrated, that danger area extends further away from goal for Windass than for most other players! 

He’s also struck up a terrific understanding with Sam Smith, whose tireless running, both behind the centre backs and laterally, creates the sort of space Windass can exploit. His set-up of Windass’ goal at Oxford was exquisite. 

The way Windass spoke post-match about the quality of Wrexham’s squad, both on and off the pitch, was telling. He might maintain a cool exterior, but he is loving his Welsh adventure. 

We’re loving it too, and his ability to deliver when it matters means the difficulty of our two remaining fixtures isn’t a problem for him; it’s the sort of challenge he lives for.