It’s the little things that make the difference. The infrastructure improvements which have been brought in by Wrexham’s owners has made a massive impact, even though it’s not necessarily obvious on the surface. 

For me the most important upgrade has been an investment in the physical preparation of the players. We’ve tempted extremely impressive personnel from higher up the football food chain to establish a department which has already made an important contribution to our season. 

I’m not just talking about our overall fitness, although it’s tempting to note the remarkable number of late goals we score and wonder whether they can be put down to superior physical conditioning.

However, it’s in rehabilitating injured players that I think we can really see a positive impact.

Take Harry Lennon, for example, We signed him with injury problems, and he didn’t have much of a preseason. Considering that, the level at which she was able to play in the first half of the season, both in terms of his performance and his physicality, remarkable. 

Admittedly, he has succumbed to injury again, but he was able to play in 19 games this season, whereas he’s only started 43 over the last 5 seasons.

Here we see the effect of intelligent investments: Lennon should not be playing in the National League, but his injuries limited his options. Therefore, if we can rehabilitate him fully we will have a very high class centre back on our hands. 

Wrexham, it should be remembered, have quite a lot of injury problems at the moment. Investing in physical preparation does not ward off injuries. The best physios and sports scientists in the world can’t protect you from being kicked in the shins! 

Perhaps the most striking injury is that to Tom O’Connor. It’s incredible that we can bring a player in to such fanfare and excitement, and then embark on a winning run without him which has almost made people forget that we have him up our sleeves! 

O’Connor was tearing up League One when we signed him in January, and was near the top of most of the metrics used to measure midfielders. That’s remarkable: it’s rare that a midfielder dominates both the defensive and attacking statistics. 

Landing O’Connor was incredible too, and yet we’ve barely seen him on the pitch after he picked up an injury. 

The excellent performances of Jordan Davies, Luke Young, and a rejuvenated James Jones in midfield have made everybody relish that trio, with O’Connor fading from the memory. 

Our injury list doesn’t stop at O’Connor. Bryce Hosannah would surely have been getting plenty of pitch time were it not for the injury he picked up at Notts County, Jake Hyde is absent, Dior Angus and Jordan Ponticelli have both had recent knocks, and of course we lost Rob Lainton to a wild, unpunished challenge. 

That’s a considerable injury list, and proof that no matter how much you spend on preparing the players, there’s nothing you can do to protect them from getting kicked! 

That says a lot about the quality of our recruitment that we are being labelled to keep peace in Stockport County despite all those absences.