Depression,

October 1998

I’m depressed. I don’t consider myself a pessimist and I do consider myself to be a loyal follower of the club in general and those in charge of it at the moment in particular, but something dramatic has to happen.

As I’ve said before we’ve only brought in two players in the last two seasons (Spink and Rush). I’ve been happy with the gradual improvement over the years since we finished 92^nd but we’re not improving anymore. We are in decline. More players need to be brought into a club than one a season no matter how good your youth policy is.

This sounds ridiculous when we’re only a few points off a play-off spot but I think this reflects more on the division than anything else. Nearly every team in Division 2 is a decent side. There are no hopeless pushovers and no brilliant sides to stand out from the rest. We are now absolutely typical of these teams. In the last article I remember writing that our record was Won 3, Drawn 3, Lost 3. Now it’s 5, 5, 5.

OK, we’re still waiting for Ince and that’s not the club's fault. Cartwright’s clearly not good enough on crosses and they’ve recognised that and got a new ‘keeper. They’re also trying to add to the outfield players but we just don’t seem to be able to tempt them.

Why did we fail to sign Corrazin, Hodge and Rammel in the summer? What about Elliott? They’ve all gone to other clubs in this division and we got Rush who was turned down for the player-manager job at Wigan!

Now we’re after Paul Hughes and Steve Torpey. Fulham also want Hughes so I don’t fancy our chances of getting him. Bristol City want £400,000 for Torpey and we can’t afford that (maybe there new management may be more keen though). I think the management team can see what’s wrong but they don’t seem to be able to sign players to solve the problems. It seems that we simply don’t have the money to compete at a higher level than we are at.

However, none of this explains what has happened to the players currently at the club. Carey has been very good, Brammer is having his best ever season by far and I still think Neil Roberts could become a real asset to the club, but most players are playing well below what we know they’re capable of. Perhaps a few regulars need to be dropped. Perhaps our formation (flat back four, one winger, two strikers) has just become too predictable. We must have been pretty much this shape for about four years now.

I’m not going to make the usual stupid claims about knowing what to do. It seems unlikely to me that anybody standing on the terraces knows more about football than people who have represented their country and been doing the job for a long time now.

I’m not going to complain about what our chairman feels we can afford to spend because he’s taken us from the brink of extinction to being one of the few clubs in the league who are not in debt.

However, if something is not done to strengthen the playing squad all the great work that has been done off the field with the youth set-up, the training facilities and now hopefully the ground will collapse as the team will not be doing well enough to support the infrastructure.

Hopefully by the time you read this we’ll have made the signing we need.

All The Positions You Need To Know...

Season 1998-99 in Wrexham's league placings:

3,10,10,7,9,6,6,9,13,15,12,10,10,12,13,16