Let’s take some time to salute Phil Parkinson.
His feat of 1,000 games in management, brought up last Saturday, is truly remarkable. He’s only the 35th gaffer in history to achieve that number in the English pyramid, and boasts the 16th best win percentage.
Let that settle for a moment: that’s a superb feat when you’re being compared to managers who have achieved enough sustained success to stay in the game for so long.
Of course, he’s been a phenomenal success for us in so many ways. As a personality he has fitted perfectly into the owners’ project, and has certainly delivered the results for them! No Wrexham manager has led us to promotion more than once, and he’s aiming for number three! It’s incredible to think that in the first season of “Welcome to Wrexham” his future was discussed after we missed out in the play-offs!
When clubs undergo a transformational takeover, it’s common for the first manager to fail as they fail to balance the ability to spend with the responsibilities of team building. Parkinson has been a glorious exception to that, with a remarkable hit rate in the transfer market.
He has brought so much more than mere statistics to the club, but it’s the numbers that give real context to his achievements. He dominates the club’s managerial records and we have been the gleeful beneficiaries.
I was putting together a spreadsheet of statistics on Wrexham’s record in calendar years rather than across seasons (did I mention that I’m really sad?) Once I’d put all the data in, I started looking for the outstanding figures and the outcome was exactly as I expected. Guess what? We’ve never had it so good.
The only year we’ve stacked up figures like Parkinson’s is 1977, when we narrowly missed out on a place in the Second Division in the Summer, and roared back with the first half of the legendary 1977-78 season, when we won the Third Division title and the Welsh Cup, as well as reaching the last 8 of both the FA Cup and the League Cup.
Even that phenomenal year can’t match Parkinson’s levels though. He has been in charge at the SToK Cae Ras for 3 full calendar years, and statistically, they’re 3 of the 4 best years in our history. And that’s a long old history, you know!
In fact, 2024 was the outlier. 1977 was slightly more successful, but to be fair we did have to deal with rising another division. Isn’t it awful when promotion gets in the way of the statistics?
Statistically, the greatest year in our history began three years ago.
2022 saw us enjoy Parkinson’s first push for promotion, and it was in the January transfer window that he finally managed to put together the final pieces of his first side as he brought in Ollie Palmer, Tom O’Connor and Callum McFadzean.
We just missed out, of course, but reinforced and carried on in the same vein after the Summer break: this, of course, was the first half of our phenomenal record-breaking campaign.
No wonder the 2022 tally is so incredible: in all competitions we won 40 games, the most in a calendar year, out of 57. We scored at a rate approaching 3 goals a game, and exceeded that remarkable figure at the SToK Cae Ras, where we won 30 out of 32 games and scored over 100 goals at home for the only time in our history.
The only team to emerge from Fortress Racecourse with a point in 2022 were Maidenhead United, and I think it’s fair to say there were extenuating circumstances! They had an extra player for virtually the whole match after Paul Mullin was sent off in the 4th minute, but still needed a goal in the 2nd minute of added time to salvage a draw after Aaron Hayden put us ahead.
That game was in January: we won every home league game for the rest of the year.
2023 was the similarly successful sequel to 2022 in the Parkinson franchise. It’s the second greatest year in our history in terms of the numbers, and even outdoes 2022 away from home.
We won 14 away games in all competitions, a number we’ve only matched once. That occasion was something of a statistical peculiarity: in 2000 we were prolific on the road, but lost nearly half our home matches!
We approached two goals a game away from home in 2023 – so much for Parkinson’s teams struggling away from Wrexham – and overall actually lost one game less in 2023 than 2022.
2024 was, statistically, only the fourth greatest year in our 160 years. Shocking!
We went up a division again, of course, the first time we’ve achieved back-to-back promotions, and were remarkably parsimonious at the back. Disregarding the years were we didn’t play a full programme of matches – 1939 and 1945 bookended the Second World War while 2020 was affected by COVID – we’ve only conceded fewer goals once since joining the Football League in 1921.
That was 2010, and the first half of that year saw us establish defensive club records with a Dean Saunders side which was rock solid but impotent going forwards.
To put last year’s defensive quality into context, we conceded 13 goals in 27 home games, a post-1921 club record.
On top of all that, Parkinson gets us: the club, the town and the people. He has shown a desire to learn about us from day one, and his skill at moulding a terrific sense of team spirit in the changing room has radiated out into the fan base. I’ve never seen a team and crowd that feed off each other so prolifically, driving each other on with a sense of shared faith in each other.
Parkinson’s record is astonishing,, but the numbers are just a small part of the story; an inevitable consequence of the excellent work he has done in so many ways.
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