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Points |
Cumulative |
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James Dean explains Here's my new personal Football Enjoyment Index (FEI). The FEI measures my enjoyment of football at this stage in time, on a 1-100 index, increasing and decreasing according to events on and off the pitch at the Racecourse. I'm going to start at 50. If I reach 100, I am officially in football Nirvana. If I reach 1, I'll be willing to swap places with a Chester City fan. |
50 | 50 |
| Waynne Phillips'
injury It's bad when any player gets such a serious injury, but for it to happen to 'Rushie' when he FINALLY seemed to have conquered his fitness jinx, and was performing so well, is just abysmal luck. A little late, admittedly, but I'd like to add my voice to the chorus calling for as speedy a recovery as possible from a break that bad. |
-5 | 45 |
| Waynne gets a new
contract While we clearly had a moral obligation to give that to Waynne, with the current situation football's in, I'm sure there are chairmen who'd have tried to wriggle out of it - full marks to Mr Guterman for not doing that, and Rushie's continued employment shows that there's a silver lining to every cloud. |
+2 | 47 |
| Unbeaten in first four games Didn't actually see that one coming... I was one of our less optimistic fans at the start of the season, having seen a fair few Division Three matches at Torquay last year. While we should've killed off Boston while we had the chance, eight points, and only two conceded, from the first six hours in this division would have done me very nicely at the start of August. |
+1 | 48 |
| Rochdale at home Bizarre as it seems, this didn't affect my enjoyment that much...yeah, we lost by three goals, but I honestly believe we outplayed them! If it hadn't been for the two penalties, and some bad luck, we'd have probably gotten a draw, and it was a decent performance for much of the match against a team who are probably one of the best five in the division. |
-1 | 47 |
| Torquay away Oops... this is where the dream REALLY came crashing to a halt, for me. Yes, Torquay were good - the best I've ever seen them play, with Bedeau and Graham playing out of their skins. But our performance in the first and last 15 minutes, when we looked dangerous every time we touched the ball, bore no resemblance to our dire middle hour, when we could have been playing a pub side and still struggled. Bedeau's open-goal miss and Graham's poor penalty were real let- offs, and the performance as a whole was far worse than that against Rochdale, even if the differing scorelines don't reflect that. |
-2 | 45 |
| Wales under-21 call-ups Partly due to the calling off of the Darlington game at a time when we were low in morale and short on defenders - but also because I'm impressed that Whitfield and Mark Jones, despite not having played a League game for us at this point, forced their way into the squad alongside the ever-improving Shaun Pejic. And with the current improvement of the national squad, they may all feature in the World Cup of 2010! |
+1 | 46 |
| Bradford at home Add one for totally outplaying a side far higher than us in the League yet AGAIN. Add another for getting the win against a side far higher than us in the league AGAIN. Add two for the miracle which I was starting to think I'd never see, Wrexham in the second round of the League Cup! |
+4 | 50 |
| League Cup draw WHAT a draw! As good as we could have hoped for, given that all the big teams are in Europe and don't come in till the third round. From what I've seen of Everton in the pre-season friendly at the Racecourse, and on TV, they should be beatable if we play to our potential, and whatever the result, a good performance before what will surely be a capacity crowd could provide a much-needed boost to attendances. |
+2 | 52 |
| 4-0! 4-0! Two AMAZING performances, in which Dibble hardly had a save to make. Yes, they were against two teams so bad as to be almost laughable, but they're the kind of games we've struggled to kill off sometimes in the past, and our killer instinct in front of goal, last seen following Gary Bennett out of the Cae Ras, seems to have finally found its way back from Skelmersdale. Plus, I'm REALLY struggling to remember consecutive clean sheets in league games in the recent past. |
+3 | 55 |
| Goalkeeping situation Rogers, as far as I'm concerned, did virtually nothing wrong when Dibble was suspended at the start of the season, and is a fine player to have on the bench. Dibble's performances against Rochdale, where he seemed to be at fault for the goal he then blamed the defence for, and at Torquay, worried me, but since then, he's looked excellent, commanding the defence like Marriott and Dearden used to. Talking about Dearden, though, who can honestly say that when they saw him at Torquay, they didn't heave a mental sigh and think about how different things could/would have been last season with him in goal? |
+1 | 56 |
| Dennis Lawrence Sorry Dennis...in fairness to 'Tall Man', I don't think he looks bad when coming in…it's just the defence looks FAR more settled without him. He's somewhat naive as part of a back three, and doesn't seem to have settled down to it like the others. Still handy on the bench, though. |
-1 | 55 |
| Defence in general Pejic looks classy, apart from the blips against Rochdale and Torquay, Roberts looks as good as ever, and as for Dan Bennett... possibly the new Brian Carey. He seems FAR more mature than you'd expect him to be at 24, and really anchors the back three well. Their confidence should be high after the Swansea and Exeter games, and I'm hopeful we can go on to keep a lot more clean sheets. |
+2 | 57 |
| Edwardses Plus-two for Carlos - I've always thought he'd be good in this division, but wasn't prepared for just HOW good. His pace seems to be Olympic standard in comparison to what full-backs are used to, and his goals in the last two games have been great finishes. The other plus-one is for Paul, who despite being somewhat suspect defensively, is incredible going forward, being the best I've seen at the club for some time at getting to the byline and delivering the ball in. |
+3 | 60 |
| Andy Morrell Is there any doubt who's the front runner for player of the season at this early stage? I was impressed by Andy last season - in fact, apart from Jim Whitley, he was practically the ONLY player who impressed me last season - and predicted he'd have a good year this year, scoring a dozen or so goals and putting in some good performances along the way. Well, the good performances are here, and he's three quarters of the way to those 12 goals, and currently the leading scorer in the country - I'm now looking a bit too cautious with that prediction! What's really impressed me, though, is the way he seems to have developed as a player over the last few years - Dave Brammer is perhaps the only other member of any Wrexham team in the past decade I remember improving this much at the club. He's always been a good header of the ball, and he's always been willing to run all day, but his positioning and off the ball runs, in particular, have improved, and the skill he's shown in recent games - particularly the wonderful assist for Carlos against Bradford - has been fantastic. In fact, whisper it quietly, but we may be looking at the new Gary Bennett… |
+3 | 63 |
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On that note, we end the FEI for now, and the final total so far is... Keep that up, lads, and footballing nirvana will be here in four issues time... cross your fingers! |
63 | |