Saturday will be a day of remarkable milestones for Phil Parkinson, who will be in charge of his 900th game as manager, and also his 750th league match.
You might argue that, with the financial backing he’s received from Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, Parkinson ought to be achieving these results, but that would be massively reductive. Parkinson inherited a complex, almost unique situation, and has handled it magnificently.
Obviously, it’s easier to manage with a big budget than a small one, but there are massive pressures involved with taking on a job of this magnitude.
Expectations were sky-high the moment the takeover went through, but Parkinson has taken them in his stride, and ensured that “Welcome To Wrexham” could secure the access required to offer a candid, accurate view of the club’s activities without adversely affecting performances.
Understanding and accepting that this was part and parcel of the new owners’ business plan was essential for an new manager in 2021. Even when season one showed the owners discussing Parkinson’s job security, there seems to have been no way in which it hampered the club or the manager’s performance.
Parkinson has a remarkable hit rate when it comes to his transfer dealings. He brought in twelve players across the two transfer windows which covered last season, and the only two could reasonably be said to have not worked out.
Shaun Brisley only lasted one season, but to be fair he looked best suited to be used as cover for Ben Tozer in the centre of the defensive trio Parkinson deploys, and there was no point at which we were going to choose to be without such a central pillar of the team.
Likewise, Jake Hyde was only with us for one campaign, but injuries massively limited his opportunities.
He’d been prolific the season before for Woking, accumulating the sort of goals a striker who specialises in taking up dangerous positions between the posts scores. When he was fit last season, he got into those positions, but the finishes just wouldn’t come. He missed a string of good chances, and it felt like once they started to go in, the goals would flow.
He never got the continuity required prosper, and he continued to suffer the frustration of chances going astray right up until the end, when he missed a couple of six-yard chances at Wembley in the FA Trophy final.
Other signings didn’t take the field, but Charlie Trafford and Lee Camp were never meant to be anything more than emergency cover to pad out the squad in case there was an injury crisis between transfer windows.
Likewise, David Jones didn’t play much – although he surely scored the greatest debut goal for Wrexham of all time! – but he became a crucial member of Parkinson’s coaching staff.
His introduction of Ollie Palmer, Callum McFadzean and Tom O’Connor in the January transfer window was extremely well-judged. It felt like the slotting of the correct pieces into a jigsaw, and the side were magnificent from that point onwards. I have no doubt that if the transfer window restrictions hadn’t delayed the arrival of such key players – or, indeed, if O’Connor hadn’t been hampered by injuries – we’d have won the league last Summer.
This season, the transfer hits have kept on coming. The way he worked Elliot Lee into the starting line-up, learning from the failure of an attempted change in formation and instead adapting the brilliant playmaker into a box-to-box midfielder who perfectly fitted our existing strategy, was a stroke of genius.
Jordan Tunnicliffe and Eoghan O’Connell are clearly defenders who should be playing at a higher level, Jacob Mendy is an exciting addition, and Sam Dalby has developed excitingly.
Parkinson’s willingness to take gambles should also be acknowledged. He doesn’t need a second invitation to make changes if his expectations aren’t being met, which can be seen in the number of times he’s switched to his ultra-attacking diamond formation, allowing Paul Mullin, Palmer, Dalby and Lee to all be accommodated in an extremely forward-thinking, but balanced, shape.
Just to be clear, those expectations are that we should win every match. This isn’t an emergency plan to only be deployed when we’re losing late on: he’ll switch in an away match because we’re drawing, and nothing but three points will do.
Rob and Ryan knew what they were doing when they accepted the advice they were given to bring in an experienced boss. Parkinson’s knows what he’s doing, and it’s a pleasure to have him at the club and see him do it for the 900th time. Let’s hope he celebrates his thousandth game with us, because that will mean he’ll have led us back into the Football League.
Leave a Reply