Paul Mullin left Wrexham as a hero this week. Am I being naïve when I express a hope that he’ll return at the end of the season, rejuvenated and ready to add to his Racecourse legend?

While Mullin had a rough time of it last season, I don’t see how it was down to anything other than an accumulation of unfortunate circumstances.

Missing two consecutive preseasons is bound to have a serious effect on any player, quite apart from the serious injuries which forced such a handicap onto Mullin.

His desire to bounce back might have been a contributory factor in last season’s frustrations, as his desperation to get back on track was obvious.

Uncharacteristic missed chances added to the pressure on him, and in striving to make amends he seemed to lose that natural instinct in front of goal.

The statistics illustrate this clearly. Despite starting just nine league matches last season, and not appearing at all after January, he features in the list of the thirty players who had the most shots in the division.

The problem is, his conversion rate was well down on his usual standards as he tried too hard to hit the net. Just 4.65% of his shots went in; contrast this with the season before, when he scored with 18% of his shots.

The really revealing statistic is how many of his on-target shots resulted in goals. In 2023-24, 38% of them were goals. Last season that figure was down to 11%.

This indicates that he’s got into positions where he can work the keeper regularly, but hasn’t been able to finish at anything like his normal level.

Ironically, that’s a good thing when it comes to Mullin’s future. With a proper pre-season and a full campaign of first team action under his belt, he should be up and running next Summer.

These stats show that he wasn’t out of his depth in League One; if he had been, he’d surely have been invisible instead of getting off shot after shot.

The problem was that a mixture of injury and frustration meant he couldn’t match his normal standards.  A reset at Wigan Athletic sounds like just the ticket to me.

Wigan’s fans are desperate for a goal scorer to worship too.

That explains why their fans responded with such delight to the turgid goalless draw they fought out against us in the closing weeks of last season. It was a meaningless game, for them at least, and there were barely any threats on either goal.

They had two chances in the second half, one of which was hardly a tap-in, while famously we failed to get a shot on target in the whole match.

Yet a big home crowd reacted with delight at the final whistle, and their media team were utterly thrilled with what they described as their best performance of the season when I chatted to them post-match.

That tells you what went wrong for the Latics last season. They entered the campaign with ambition, and immediately established that their defence was formidable. However, the goals simply wouldn’t come and they spent the whole campaign hovering above the drop zone.

They never really looked in too much danger of being relegated as the season went on, but there was clearly an issue of balance which needed to be addressed.

The data suggests there are two parts to Wigan’s attacking problem, and Mullin is potentially a fantastic solution to one of them. They had the fifth lowest xG in the division last season, and failed even to match that figure, ending up the lowest scorers in League One.

The low xG will have to be addressed, but if Athletic can add more creativity to their side and give Mullin the service he thrives on, I’m sure Mullin will be the man to fix their failure to match their xG, and then some.

I’m aware that this will read like a tribute to a departing hero, and that might well be the case. I sincerely hope not, though. Mullin is an outstanding player and an exceptional person. His desire to succeed is exceeded only by his focus on what is best for the team.

He was phenomenal in League Two, returning a goal tally which was decisive to our promotion campaign despite struggling all season against serious injuries and the fitness issues created by a lack of a proper pre-season.

Last season was a bridge too far, but he is far from finished. He’s a quality player who will benefit from going back to the state of affairs he got used to at Wrexham.

At Wigan, he will be the star man they will pin their hopes on, and Mullin relishes that scenario.

Dropping down to the National League after winning promotion to League Two with Cambridge as the top scorer in the division and its player of the season meant he simply had to deliver. Mediocrity was not an option; even mild success would have been viewed as an underperformance. Seventy nine goals from ninety five starts in his two seasons at that level showed he loved the challenge.

Hopefully he’ll rise to the occasion again at Wigan, and then face the challenge of fulfilling the role of returning hero. What a nice way to celebrate his first season in the Premier League that would be!