Football is a game of opinions, isn’t it? Although you may disagree...

No game, manager or player ever successfully brings a fanbase together in undivided, wholesome unity. You can still find supporters out there who think that legends are overrated or that promotion-riddled gaffers didn’t justify their wages. Even our Hollywood owners are not universally beloved by Reds, as a brief scan of social media will show.

We all have our own points of view. It’s what makes the world go around. And we accept that fact. Until we bump into someone who has a different idea of what is working and what isn’t.

But that’s ok. It’s impossible for all of us to be on the same page all of the time.

So, the first home game of the season did something quite special in putting everyone in sync, for once. Watford (H) presented us all with a shared problem: Getting into the ground.

A shift to digital ticketing is part of the inevitable and relentless drive towards the modernisation of the club and sport at large, but more than forty years on from the birth of the internet, moving from paper to digital is still a panic-inducing prospect in any industry. It’s never smooth and always creates issues.

So it told on Saturday. It impacted everyone: From the battle-worn, grumbling curmudgeons who first leapt through the turnstiles as nippers in the 1950s, to the giddy Texans who wandered up Crispin Lane marvelling at their fortune to be among a mile of parked cars on one side of the road and thickets and weeds on the other.

The pre-match anxiety in the pubs had shifted away from what we could expect on the field, and towards the unfamiliar passes glowing on our phones.

“Does your ticket look like this, la?” Reds asked one another, briefly putting their pints to one side to shove screens in one another’s faces.

Nobody was confident they’d received the right tickets or that it would work. But it was all ok in the end. From as far as I could tell, the club did a decent job in the circumstances. The ticket office opened early and staff were rolled out to play makeshift IT experts , patrolling the queues and offering advice that ranged from complex data solutions to: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”.

Everyone seemed to get in, eventually. And the anxiety eased as the queues moved forwards. One fan did go ballistic about being told they couldn’t bring an umbrella into the ground on a sunny day for a spot in which they were sat undercover - but that was par for the course. You can’t get 10,000 people together and expect them all to be completely rational.

There were a few minutes of calm having successfully navigated the turnstiles. Returning to Y Cae Ras after the summer break always feels like pulling up on your drive after a long trip away with work: Embracing family and nodding politely at neighbours, who seem to have aged a little since you last saw them. It’s familiar and it’s comfortable and it’s home.

It was good to be back. But as the match wore on, it felt a little less like a great homecoming and more like the kind of forgettable fixture you end up sitting through in the middle of the season - a result you look back on in years to come and frown, struggling to recall anything of note that happened or if you’d even attended.

The uneven performance was a reflection of a team in flux - which is still being fine-tuned as we speak. At the time of writing, Jacques Ekomié has become a Red, with a few more rumoured to follow including the potential return of the crowd-whipping Issa Kabore.

We have until 11pm on Tuesday 1 September 2026 to get everything in place, but in the meantime the focus is Birmingham: A click-worthy bonanza for a media that loves to pounce upon our shared American links to help spread word across the Atlantic. Indeed, Sky Sports are on the ball, so to speak, and quickly earmarked this one for tele - which means a Friday night under the lights.

Brum fans will not be in a good mood tonight. Even before they learned the news of bus replacement services into Wrexham General, they were already miffed at having to watch another game under manager Chris Davies, who appears to be enormously unpopular at St Andrew’s at the moment.

It has become tradition to kick off these fixtures with firework displays, and if Brum fans are all still pissed off, there might be a few explosions on the field as well, with the players responding aggressively to the groans and screams from the away end.

As for us, the game may help to reveal what’s working, what’s missing, and where the final signings ought to be made.

You may think a striker is required. Or a new midfielder. Or that greater efforts ought to have been made to hang onto Arthur.

You may think one thing or the other. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Let’s all just hope for a first win of the season. COYR.

Football fans are protective of the word “derby”. Use it incorrectly at your peril.

Those who dared to describe Wrexham’s opener with our distant Welsh cousins in this manner were promptly shot down by critics wielding screenshots of Google Maps as a weapon - denoting this ‘derby’ featured two sides who sit 147 miles apart.

You can’t get away with calling it ‘The Welsh Derby’ either. There are four sides in the pyramid who hail from God’s Country nowadays, so it’s hardly an anomaly to meet a team from our own country.

Rivalry doesn’t cut it for some either. The argument is that if you bumped into a Bluebird fan on an Arriva Trains Wales service, you probably wouldn’t feel that pang of unease that comes with spotting someone in a Chester shirt. For huge stretches of the year, Cardiff City are not on our minds, and we are not on theirs.

There is no universally agreed moniker for the Wrexham vs Cardiff City fixture. But whatever you want to call it, there is a tangible sense of mutual distaste in the air whenever the time comes to meet one another on the field.

Games between us have been as rare as hen’s teeth in recent years, but Wrexham’s resentment at being the long-forgotten Welsh kid in the north, coupled with Cardiff’s smug satisfaction at being the country’s golden child, still hasn’t gone away.

“WE ARE YOUR CAPITAL” hooted the City fans at Y Cae Ras last season - glowing in the victory over their fellow countrymen they consider second class citizens.

That night probably ranks as the lowest moment of the season: Bottling it on our own turf to the point where the media humiliatingly labelled it as ‘Men vs Boys’.

That coverage served to feed Cardiff’s superiority complex, which has seemed to swell ever since. On the way into the Cardiff City Stadium on Monday night, some Reds were greeted by one fan - accompanied by a child - with: “You may as well turn around now you Scouse bastards, you’re gonna get battered.”

We already wanted to right the wrongs of a torrid evening last time we played Cardiff, and these charming home fans only heightened that desire.

The game also presented an opportunity to remind the world that a power shift is happening in Wales. Cardiff might have the Senedd and the skyscrapers. But we are vying to become the bigger force in football.

Adding to the tension was the fact that it had felt like a long wait for the Cardiff game to roll around, as the rest of the league kicked off around us over the previous three days.

There was also uncertainty around what was happening between the sticks - with Reds still wondering whether it was a smart move to splash huge cash on shot-stopper Anthony Patterson with Okonkwo and Ward on hand.

It is wild how quickly things can change. It feels like only yesterday that bringing in Big Arthur on a permanent deal was being hailed as an almighty coup. But now some - including Parky - are seemingly doubtful of whether he is the best Number One for a Premier League push. The gaffer will say he is just creating strong competition. But that’s probably not it. You don’t spend £8 million on a new goalkeeper if you have complete confidence in what you already have.

All eyes were on the GK position as the lineup was unveiled - and it was even worse for Arthur than we might have thought, with the lad not even making the bench, never mind the starting XI.

But it turned out we were all looking in the wrong direction anyway. In all the shot-stopper excitement, we foolishly forgot this is Kieffer Moore’s fixture (he’s scored buckets of goals both for and against Cardiff) and it only took three minutes for him to remind us of that fact.

The net rattled and whatever air that was left in the lungs of the Red Army after screaming down O’Neill’s pub pre-match came roaring out across the South Wales night sky, wiping the pompous smirks off the faces of a Cardiff fanbase who seemed to sense that perhaps they weren’t entitled to a victory after all.

The Bluebirds players were visibly nervous, the crowd were tetchy, and everything seemed to be going our way. But as the chances kept coming and going, there was a realisation - at least in the Red end of the ground - that one goal would not be enough.

So it proved. When Neath-born Rubin Colwill began lining up his 98th minute free-kick on the edge of the box, we all knew what was going to happen.

Patterson - who had enjoyed an otherwise solid debut - reignited the GK debate by failing to keep out the shot, and Cardiff City Stadium exploded in relief.

In the aftermath of Cardiff’s 2-1 win at Y Cae Ras last season, Yousef Salech attempted to endear himself to the more righteous Bluebirds fans by claiming this game “means more to [Wrexham] than us”.

The ecstatic celebrations that met Cardiff’s equaliser proved this - if we didn’t know already - to be laughably false. It was only a draw, but for anyone who’d tuned in on tele late - watching the home crowd stay behind at full-time to bounce around in delirium to Status Quo - would be forgiven for thinking Cardiff had Won All The Football.

Well, that’s our fault, really, isn’t it? We can never claim to be the capital, but here was a golden chance to show everyone that Cardiff is no longer the epicentre of Welsh football and that the north is now its equal.

We all know that to be true. But until that overdue victory comes against Cardiff City, they can continue to claim otherwise. We can have another go at fixing that in March.

Until then, there are months of football to play.

On we go.

UTST.

I spotted someone trying to squeeze a very big van through a very small gate the other week. It ended just how you might expect.

As the vehicle inched forward, the walls seemed to close in, and an awful screech filled the sky as the paint on the van was stripped away, leaving non-descript debris scattered across the tarmac.

The driver slapped his head and roared profanities into the morning sunshine as he barrelled through into the car park, cursing the world for his own misfortune.

It was all avoidable, really. But that driver wasn’t alone. Disasters like this happen every day. For proof, all you’d needed to do was pop your head into Wrexham AFC’s club shop over the summer.

Without a ref to shout at or an underperforming player to critique, football fans had been bereft of channels in which to pour their frustration. So the mess-up in the merch department couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The club - and poor old Sam Smith who was the unwitting face of this fiasco - were probably caught by surprise by the intensity of the response. But like the van driver who gambled on a small gate and ended up having to say goodbye to his no-claims bonus, this was all too bold.

Creating a swanky new jacket with a white dragon instead of an English one could be considered a piece of sloppy oversight (the Italians over in the Macron offices are probably not as well versed in the mythology of Wales as your average Red), but trying to sell a Wrexham cap with an England flag emblazoned on the side is a fool’s errand.

When the images of both products surfaced online, it was like watching someone enter a bird sanctuary covered head to toe in seed mix - with species flocking from as far as Swansea and Cardiff to peck at the pictures with a deranged hunger.

The club can easily swallow the cost of poor sales for a couple of bits of clothing these days. But it has raised a question as to how they could not see this coming.

Two theories emerged. One is that an undercover Englishman is operating somewhere in the retail department, playing an elaborate prank by smuggling a St George Cross design into Welsh kits to distract him from England’s inevitable World Cup exit. But the other - and more likely - theory is that the club decided to take some big risks that just backfired.

If there’s a lesson in all this, it’s don’t ever piss about with the Welsh dragon. Now, we can all move on. Football is the thing that we ought to be getting really worked up about after all, rather than leisurewear.

The friendlies offered some respite, but not much. There were no angry goalkeepers kung-fu kicking our star strikers in the chest this summer, and whilst the calibre of opposition was high, there was little to rage about or celebrate. I messaged one Red who had flown over for the Poland game, envious of his afternoon getting to see the Reds in Kraków, asking him how it all went.

“I spent most of the game queuing for drinks,” he replied.

Hmm. Turns out there really is no substitute for the drama of the real season. The good news is that the opening fixture at Cardiff City is only days away now - a game which is guaranteed to leave us all hollering and hooting with the kind of unreasonable enthusiasm that will put that van driver’s rant to shame.

It’s always a jolting transition jumping from the mundanity of pre-season to the explosive intensity of the domestic league, so it’s quite nice to have something of a warm-up in the form of a knockout fixture at Boro.

The League Cup is one of those competitions everyone forgets exists until the Round One games muscle their way into schedules - and getting to visit the Riverside in this tournament provides something of a free hit. The stakes are high enough - but a defeat won’t keep us up at night.

It’ll also give us a chance to take a peek at how the new-look side is shaping up. The general consensus is that this side remains incomplete, with Imray and Whiteman the only two signings so far. Parky has promised “a few more additions”, which bodes well. He’s choosing carefully and taking his time. Which is something the club shop might also do in the future.

It’s all getting serious again.

On to the Riverside.

COYR.

The people of Wrexham don’t have much of a relationship with Wigan.

We know the place, sure. And we’ve played them often enough over the years. We also have a rare mutual respect for a certain James McClean.

But our knowledge of the town is mostly limited to media coverage of the area that might pop up on social media during National Pie Week. And perhaps we’ve gained a little more awareness since a part-time DJ and amateur runner bounced into the town’s Makerfield constituency to launch his bid for PM.

In Summer 2025, though, for a fleeting moment, all eyes in Wrexham were on Wigan.

It was around this time last year that Paul Mullin was photographed in pie country with a pen in one hand and a contract in the other, sending social media into a frenzy.

Thousands reacted to the sight of Mulls in a blue and white shirt with a mix of horror, despair and - in a few puzzling cases - utter fury. How on Earth could we let him go, they cried. Without Mullin, there was no Wrexham.

As the subsequent days ebbed by and the raw emotion began to fade, however, most Reds came round to the idea that this was actually the best case scenario for everyone.

A loan deal would at the very least give Mullin some much-needed game time. At best, it could be the catalyst for his recovery in front of goal, meaning he’d return to Wrexham in due course to rip apart the Championship, just like we all wanted.

In the end, though, neither of those scenarios came to pass. Mulls played less than he wanted, scored fewer than anyone expected, and came back to Y Cae Ras to find himself even lower down the pecking order than before.

In the months since that tepid loan spell, nobody can really seem to pinpoint precisely what went wrong. But all the attention surrounding the striker may have been an issue.

The only thing that Wigan manager Ryan Lowe found more frustrating than SPM’s disappointing goal return was the media, who followed his every turn like a great big shadow in the glaring spotlight.

“Everything seems to be Paul Mullin, Paul Mullin,” Lowe grumbled.

“I’m not bothered about the drama of Paul Mullin. I’m bothered about my strikers scoring goals - and that’s what I want.”

When those goals proved few and far between, both parties realised with some reluctance that this simply wasn’t working. Mullin’s deal was cut short, and he was farmed out to Bradford before he could even begin to fight for his place back home. His time in Yorkshire yielded even fewer minutes on the pitch and no goals whatsoever.

By the time the season was done, everyone suspected his Wrexham career probably was, too. A statement confirmed his departure on June 26. And this time it was permanent.

It felt a little awkward to wave Mullin off again - a bit like when you give someone an emotional farewell and then realise you’re both walking in the same direction. But if anyone deserves a second goodbye, it’s Mulls. His departure has been another excuse to relive the big moments and the best memories that will continue to be replayed on Red screens almost as much as Mickey Thomas’ free-kick or Ryan Valentine’s penalty from years gone by.

Wigan’s manager Ryan Lowe might have been onto something, in suggesting the cloud of public curiosity hanging over Mullin’s career is not always a good thing. In some ways, the guy is a victim of his own success. He has achieved so much and become so famous in such a short space of time, any move he makes now will be the subject of scrutiny.

It doesn’t always have to be this way for ex-players. Sam Dalby, Jordan Davies and Luke Young are all examples of how former heroes have moved along with a firm handshake, and thrived in new environments where they have been free to focus on themselves. But Mulls, because of his talismanic aura, hasn’t been afforded that luxury.

Everyone can see that the current Mullin is not the same player who spearheaded Wrexham’s ascent into the Championship. But it’s not too late for a new chapter.

“There are some people who make us believe” sobbed Rob Mac in his tearful Mullin farewell social media post.

Now Mulls needs a new club to believe in him.

He’s earned two goodbyes from us. And he’s earned another shot somewhere else.

If anywhere needed a laugh on May bank holiday, it would surely be Wrexham.

Oh, the poor Red Dragons. The chance of a history-making, logic-defying, quadruple promotion to the Premier League stolen away by one goal. Pipped to the post by another team who’d won on their own turf with an offside strike. Fans all over the internet revelling in the failure.

An opportune moment to send the clowns into North Wales, you’d think. We needed it right? Something - anything - to lift a fanbase that would almost certainly be wallowing in self-pity, grumbling through cans of Wrexham Lager in shadowy living rooms, cursing the moment we let Jannik Vestergaard from relegated Leicester City salvage a point at the death on a sullen winter’s night at Y Cae Ras several months earlier. It could have all been so different.

Yet, as Reds filtered down Mold Road knowing that top-flight football would remain nothing but a dream, there was no one really - as far as I could tell - who needed picking up.

Despite how the day had gone, everything felt kind of… ok.

“We’ve had worse Saturdays than that,” one fan quipped, conjuring up images of being stood on a barren Kop as we were outclassed by a mediocre Accrington Stanley during the relegation season.

Some portions of the fanbase are sick and tired of other Reds reminding them of how bad we once had it, insisting there is more sense in looking forward rather than dwelling on the past.

There’s some truth in that, but last weekend’s draw - that left neither Wrexham nor Middlesbrough with the result they needed - wasn’t the downer that it should have been. On this occasion, everyone seemed to have a shared understanding and sense of perspective. We were all on the same page. And things were still good.

More than good, in fact. Just five years ago, 110 teams in the football pyramid were better than Wrexham. Now there’s only 26. When you leap that far so fast, it’s hard to feel too sad about coming up short for one afternoon.

The city’s pubs were still swelling with red shirts long into the evening as we milked the final matchday of the season for all it was worth, and a few pints later, there was a begrudging acceptance that even if we’d made the play-offs, it probably would have proven a bridge too far.

As we shrugged and smiled and mulled over the great moments of the season - QPR away, pushing Chelsea to the wire, beating the league champions with a Kieffer Moore masterclass - there was, however, a cloud hanging above Y Cae Ras tunnel. Among our players, the mood was darker.

Post-match interviews suggested the dressing room was in despair at having come within spitting distance of the play-offs. But this is only cause for further hope among the Red faithful. When was the last time players were left more despondent by a defeat than the fans? It wasn’t long ago that we had a team who always had one foot in Liquid/Envy before the final whistle went, and couldn’t give a shit if we won or lost as long as their wages were paid. It was infuriating watching them make half-arsed attempts to tackle on a Saturday afternoon, but break a sweat to make the front of the bar queue on Saturday evening.

But there are no characters like that in this current squad. A couple are perhaps punching above their weight and playing in a division too high. But they are giving it everything. They care.

Parky’s greatest trait is finding characters who are willing to put in the work and take pride in being the best. Our gaffer knows his way around a tactics board and can dish out the hairdryer treatment when the side needs it. But his real talent remains an eye for players who want to wear the shirt. If any teammate shows a hint of hesitancy or seems distracted, they simply vanish. Sometimes temporarily, seemingly just to get their head straight. Sometimes forever, never to be seen in North Wales again.

Expect more of these Ambitious Grafter types arriving in summer as we aim to level up again for a fourth promotion in five seasons.

It was a bit weird not spilling onto the pitch at this point in the calendar. But this campaign has been just as fulfilling, in its own way, as the previous three. We have never finished this high up in our history. If next year is half as entertaining and enjoyable, we are in for a helluva time.

No Prem, no problem. Everything is hunky-dory. Time to sit back with a smile and wait for August. It will be here before we know it.

Wrexham is still the fun place to be.

COYR.

In an analysis of Coventry City’s title-winning season, local newspaper The Coventry Telegraph wrote that Frank Lampard’s mantra for success involved a balanced approach: The squad “have a laugh and muck around, but know when to get serious and work”.

That sounded bloody perfect. At least for us.

By the time we headed down to the Midlands to play Frank’s lads, Cov had already been crowned champions and had absolutely nothing left to play for. If there was ever a time for that team to have a hoot and piss about, it was against Wrexham: A match in which they didn’t need to win, or draw, or even score.

No such luck. Lampard had obviously decided that there was still work to do, meaning the Sky Blues’ performance oozed the kind of annoying professionalism that, quite frankly, we really could have done without.

It was much to our chagrin that the home team turned up with the right attitude, and whilst it could have gone differently with a bit more luck (see Thomason’s strike against the post and Smith scuppering a one-on-one), few would begrudge Cov their win, as we became the latest in a long list of many to fall at the CBS arena.

The result for Cov was a meaningless extra three points, and left Wrexham’s grip on the final play-off spot looking about as secure as a sand castle on Rhyl beach in winter.

We have two other teams breathing down our necks to snatch sixth place: A rung that is among the most coveted in the entire football pyramid. Finishing here puts you just three wins away from the Premiership.

But the Championship’s remaining play-off place is being treated like the last can of cold beer in the cooler at the BBQ. Everyone wants it, but nobody has - yet - been bold enough to take it for themselves.

Our form these past few weeks has been bumpy. Hull are suffering some sort of quiet implosion (having won just one game since beating us - and that was against whipping boys Wednesday), and Derby are under the illusion they have to follow up every victory with a defeat.

It all comes down to the final day, and the scenario is one that programmes like Gillette Soccer Saturday were built for. There are so many potential outcomes - the silliest of all is that we can beat Middlesborough and still miss out if Hull blow Norwich away (leapfrogging us on goal difference).

On current form, it is not inconceivable that Wrexham, Hull and Derby will all lose. But finale day does funny things to football teams and there will be a series of twists and turns that could leave a different side occupying that sixth spot at various points throughout the day. You have to feel for anyone with a phone linked up to an O2 mast this weekend, as the circuits are set to be jammed from minute one: 13,000 fans inside Y Cae Ras refreshing the score updates every few seconds.

It’s going to be one of those kinds of days. We’d rather have had it all wrapped up by now so we could scout those Wembley hotels and get a Premier Inn booked before Lenny Henry hikes up the prices. But the fact that we’re in the mix at all is kind of mad, and these late season jitters - following a tiring FA Cup run - are all understandable.

We’ve never been this high before. The altitude is strange and unfamiliar. But the pressure is not. Parky often gets a performance out of his side when the chips are down, and we will need a big one to find a way past Boro - plus a favour or two from Norwich and/or Sheff Utd, if they’d be so kind.

So many ifs and buts. It’s not all in our hands. But the Red Army will do what it can.

The reward for one last big push is we’ll get three more.

COYR.

There have been plenty of nauseating sights at Y Cae Ras over the years. Alex Hamilton on the Kop. Richard Hope’s defending. Chester fans in the away section. Yet none, as far as I recall, have been stomach-churning enough to cause someone to actually spill their guts inside the stadium.

But, on Tuesday night, it finally happened. A 5-1 thumping by a play-off rival was just too tough to swallow.

Fans in the Mold Road may have been privy to one unfortunate supporter vomiting down the back of a chair during the second half, apparently moved in all the wrong ways by the scene of carnage unfolding on the pitch.

That’s what happens when you don’t train your stomach for a while, I guess. For too long at Y Cae Ras, it’s been nothing but Michelin-starred meals. When we finally did get a rotten serving for the first time in yonks, we’d completely forgotten how to digest it.

Unfamiliar as it was surprising, the Soton thrashing also came at an enormous cost. After months of Premier League dreams, we’re now left worrying whether we’re actually going to make those coveted play-off spots at all.

Who could have seen this coming? Even when we went 2-0 down, with Saints playing in FIFA Legendary Mode, we still believed. The comeback at The Hawthorns on Good Friday was still fresh in our minds, and if we’ve learned anything this season, it’s to never write off the Reds.

True to form, Windass pulled one back (the consolation goal is probably his favourite kind as it does not necessitate a celebration), and another Wrexham Revival looked like it could be on the cards. At half-time, commentators gushed at what a game we had on our hands, chastising those who had chosen to watch Real Madrid vs Bayern Munich in the Champions League instead.

Those who stuck with Wrexham v Saints did indeed get to see a flurry of goals. But they were all at one end of the pitch.

While Mbappe and Kane were busy doing bits over at the Bernabeu, Saints’ Cyle Larin was channelling Gareth Bale by surging through to the Tech End and almost ripping the goal apart.

The floodgates opened in the final few minutes - which felt like an eternity as Saints continued to mercilessly pour forward. Only the woodwork and a fine feat of athleticism from Arthur in stoppage time prevented a battering from becoming a historic humiliation.

“We haven’t had many nights like that since I’ve been here,” Parky sulked in his post-match presser.

He’s right. You have to search the memory banks pretty hard to pick out a pummelling that comes close to this. Losing 5-0 at Stockport in 2023 was, I guess, a little worse: One because we didn’t score, and two because their fans still dine out on the story of that game. But not even that pasting at Edgeley Park caused a poor fan to puke.

We’re all a little green around the gills right now, and having to go back to Birmingham again isn’t exactly a good remedy for an unsettled stomach. Brum’s season has fizzled out, but they will be in no mood to treat us kindly - and the opportunity to bang a nail in the coffin of our play-off push will have the same kind of appeal to Tom Brady as a gigantic plate of organic food balanced on a weights machine.

The Saints left some stains on our shirts, for sure. But this is no time to sit in shame, feeling sorry for ourselves.

There’s five huge games left to play. We need to find our appetite again.

COYR.

This latest edition of CfaQ comes from a train station waiting room on a Saturday afternoon. The location is Sheffield, but to be honest, it could be any transport hub in the UK. They all look like this.

The screens are littered with delay warnings, the loudspeakers belch out muffled, unenthusiastic apologies for disruption, and some feral birds are fluttering around on the staircases plucking at some limp flecks of beige pastry that probably belonged to a sausage roll once upon a time.

No one on the platforms seems appropriately dressed for the four seasons that this single day in March is conjuring: The coat wearers look hot and flustered, and the high-heeled hen dos are shivering. Everyone here appears to be either panicked, pissed-off, or just a bit pissed. There is nothing to do, everyone is restless, and the cheapest thing anyone can seem to find for sustenance is a bottle of water from the vending machine at £2.99. The only time these strangers interact is when someone approaches to ask for a charger, a lighter, or insight as to where the person at the coffee counter has disappeared.

People complain about the disruption of football crowds at train stations, and you just know that Karen from marketing is still complaining to her colleagues about the time she got stuck on a TfW service in 2023, with chants of “WE’VE GOT MULLIN” interrupting her whilst she was trying to finish writing her press release. But without the kaleidoscope of club colours twisting across the bridges and through the ticket barriers, there is a noticeable absence of energy in these places. They can feel strangely soulless. Even when the train operators are at their most inept and the services fall like dominoes, the footy crowd always find ways to keep one another entertained, clambering through the carriages with cans and crisps, and swapping season notes with rivals on the tables beside them. Even on a bad day, the journey can feel so much quicker when the football crowd are on board.

But of course, no supporters were present this past weekend. The international schedule had culled a big portion of the EFL fixture list, leaving the UK’s transport hubs quieter than usual. This would have all been ok, perhaps, if Wales hadn’t mimicked England by royally bungling a semi-final penalty shootout. But what we got instead was a weekend of no Wrexham and a summer of no Wales.

But it is what it is. And there’s no reason to wallow. One of the best sporting weekends of the calendar is almost upon us - as Easter produces a double-header of huge ties for Parky’s promotion hopefuls.

The first: A trip to the Midlands to play the Baggies. The second: A home duel with Saints - the club that insists on yanking us out of our play-off spot.

There is more movement across the Championship table during this weekend than on a multi-player pinball machine, and depending on how these two ties turn out, we could end up within touching distance of the autos, or cut adrift from the play-off spots with games running out.

It really can be that transformative. Just think back to previous years for proof. Easter Monday 2023 was Notts County at home: The day that changed everything. Good Friday 2024 was Mansfield - a statement victory over a promotion rival that ultimately saw us climb above them into 2nd. Easter Monday 2025 was Blackpool (A) - perhaps our best away performance of the season and three points that propelled us into the top two with just a couple of games to play.

Whilst the rest of the country’s most difficult decision from Thursday 5pm will be weighing up whether to spend their wages on a tank of petrol or some giant ovoid chocolate, Parky is wrestling with the tactical moves that could make or break the season.

West Brom is the immediate focus. When the Baggies visited Wrexham in August, the season was still in its embryonic phase, with Reds starstruck at the fact we were getting to play all these gigantic clubs on a weekly basis. Albion - no stranger to top tier footy - took advantage of our dazed state to win that one, but our fortunes have differed markedly ever since. The best the Baggies can hope for this season is to stay up, with a rotten run of results blowing them dangerously close to the relegation pit that’s big enough for three. They are desperate to pick up points to stop that from happening. The top two tiers is all they know, having spent the last thirty years in the upper echelons of the EFL. This game is as big for them as it is for us.

Many Reds will have never visited the Hawthorns so this will be a novelty as well as a massive game of football, and The Trainline will be seeing a flurry of trips being booked from North Wales to Birmingham New Street this week. The services probably still won’t run on time, but at least the stations will be full of life again.

All aboard for the biggest weekend of the season.

COYR.

Wrexham was in no shape for another football match last Tuesday.

The whole city was covered in a cold sweat ahead of kick-off against Hull, having spent the previous three nights plagued by nightmares of referee Peter Bankes drawing a square in the air.

Saturday’s pre-game pub concerns about Chelsea’s Liam Delap, Pedro Neto, and that defender who won’t cut his hair were all misdirected. It was VAR that was to prove our downfall.

This universally-despised Dementor of football - a monster that thrives on sucking the joy out of the game’s great moments - had never darkened our door until Saturday. But we know all about it now.

Developing some sort of mental defence against VAR will be necessary if we make it to the Premier League: A division where this tech regularly swoops in to steal happiness from supporters after sensing someone’s nose might be offside.

Granted, this all might come across as lemon-bitter. So, in the interest of fairness, it’s right to point out that the game hasn’t all ‘gone’ and some modern additions have been successful. Goal-line technology, for instance, is pretty flawless. It’s fast, it’s accurate, and it makes fair decisions at speed. In other words, it works.

But it is so much more difficult to get behind VAR: A piece of technology that makes offside decisions based on the length of toenails and brings games to a screeching halt, leaving fans to shrug and stare blankly around the stadium for an indeterminate period of time - like passengers on a platform when their train is simply marked ‘DELAYED’.

The fact that VAR still angers almost every football fan in the world says something. But alas, it seems destined to stay. And we were still cursing its existence by the time the Hull team were filing out of the tunnel at Y Cae Ras on Tuesday evening.

If there was ever an indication that Wrexham AFC is currently occupying heights so dizzying that we have lost all sense of perspective, consider the fact that a tie against play-off rivals was largely ignored until kick-off time - with all the talk still about the proud but ultimately unsuccessful push to topple Chelsea.

Everyone was too tired and distracted for this one to have a happy ending, and when the final whistle signalled a defeat, no one was particularly surprised.

The one silver lining of the Hull game was its ability to put clear blue water between the FA cup hangover and our all-Welsh grudge game with Swansea - who rolled into Y Gogledd full of swagger and hot on our heels for a play-off spot.

This author incorrectly predicted an incoming brawl between the two clubs over who held the biggest star power - RR McReynolds or Snoop Dogg - but in the heat of battle on the pitch, supporters seemed far more interested in labelling each other as ‘English’ instead.

It was a feisty atmosphere at times, and after a hard-fought, morale-boosting victory - much needed after the debacle we saw down in South Wales earlier this season - the noise of the Swans’ honking disapproval as they waddled out of the stadium was only the beginning. It wasn’t until full-time that they really started flapping - as SKY SPORTS shared footage of Rob and Ryan on their comms table.

The sight of our chairmen in the media box was treated like the biggest American-powered corruption scandal since a gangster conspired to fix the World Series, with the Swans (and indeed other fans) criticising its heavy bias.

RR McReynolds cheered when Wrexham scored, of course, but otherwise seemed to be there mostly for comic relief. I’m not sure their presence hurt anyone. Indeed, the quips being made on comms had no influence on Swansea’s inability to find the better of Big Arthur, or handle the inexplicably talented Callum Doyle (who is fast becoming a late contender for Player of the Season).

It’s always nice to triumph over a fanbase that detests the Red rise and everything that’s come with it, and that victory over the wrong side of Wales could prove to be a big one.

Another three points at Watford will keep us pushing towards the Land of VAR. Is it something we’re ready for?

Ah, no point in worrying about that yet. It’s all hypothetical right now.

As Parky will surely be telling his team, this is just another league game. Business as usual.

COYR.

We are not alone. Wrexham is no longer Wales’ sole representative on America’s West Coast.

Whilst the Reds were busy huffing and puffing to get over the line against an industrious Portsmouth last Tuesday evening, Swansea City - who are like our slightly weird southern distant cousins that we reluctantly visit once in a blue moon - were the ones basking in the beam of the TV cameras as cannabis connoisseur Snoop Dogg paraded the field against the backdrop of printed tea towels being twirled in the air.

The scenes at the Swansea City stadium were a little different to when Rob and Ryan first visited Y Cae Ras - our owners delivered an emotional speech to the crowd whilst a shade-donning Snoop alighted a bus dragging a boombox - but they had the same effect. Everyone tuned in and the media went mad.

Wales now has two football teams with international stature. Cardiff City will also argue they have a presence on the global stage, but with the exception of their owner’s pals over in Malaysia, real evidence of foreign interest remains elusive.

Is this Dogg Swans thing just a fad or a brooding obsession? It could be legit. This same question was posed of RR McReynolds after all. But in any case, the Wrexham hierarchy will have to be content with playing second fiddle in terms of media exposure for now.

That will all change, of course, if Operation: Premier League is completed ahead of schedule. Two home wins last week - one rip-roaring and another nerve-jangling - saw us take two giant strides towards making that happen.

Whilst this Wrexham-Swansea battle between who is more famous could get dangerously close to ‘My Dad’s Bigger Than Your Dad’ territory, worse yet it may set off a tennis match in which each fanbase is labelling the other as ‘obsessed’.

Football supporters who spend their weekends fighting with rivals on the internet can be surprisingly creative and we have a plethora of insults to choose from now. ‘Living in your head rent free’. ‘Always in our shadow’. ‘Your strikers couldn’t finish their dinner’. Our cup runneth over. But the current flavour of the month, tossed around the pages of social media like leaves in a salad spinner, is ‘obsessed’.

It behoves us to mention Charlton here. Any Red who dared to comment on our win over the Addicks back in November would have found this put-down in their comments section - particularly if they had chosen to gloat about getting one over Nathan Jones. During that game, Charlton fans even bellowed a song about their gaffer that suggested we were indeed ‘obsessed’: “He’s in your heaaaad, in your heaaaad - Jonesy, Jonesy, Jonessssyyyy” (to the tune of Zombie by The Cranberries).

In truth, it is hard not to enjoy besting a man who often behaves more like a televangelist than a football manager. Jones carries the same piercing, unblinking stare as those barmy preachers you used to see on late night TV in American hotel rooms, and now tend to find as subjects on Louis Theroux documentaries. Jones has curated a public image of showmanship so excessive it borders on cringe at times, and whilst the Addicks have converted to the Word of Nathan, North Wales has continued to reject the cult in all its forms.

That infamous circus comment was a spectacular misfire, but as much as he enjoyed making his bed, Jones clearly does not enjoy lying in it. Last time we played, after Josh Windass’ penalty curled up in the corner of the net and the American Airlines scarves whirled around Y Cae Ras’ to the tune of Carnaval De Paris, Jones was probably wishing he hadn’t bothered with all this manager malarkey and just pursued his true calling as a TV preacher instead.

The Addicks boss was desperate to get revenge in last Saturday’s tie, and whilst he reduced his antics somewhat in the lead up to kick-off, quietly promising his team would be a “different beast” to the one we saw in the reverse fixture, the result repeated itself anyway.

With Ollie doing bits at one end of the field and Arthur at the other, no amount of voodoo magic from Nathan and his followers could distract Parky’s team away from its focus of finding three points.

So, another win for the second most famous team in Wales.

It’s the big one next - an FA Cup tie with Chelsea - and if the last few weeks are anything to go by, we could be sharing a division with the Blues next season. If that happens, Snoop might need to summon the entire West Coast hip-hop scene to Swansea in order to wrestle the spotlight back to South Wales. Because Wrexham fever will be everywhere.

In the meantime, a cup tie against one of Britain’s sporting giants presents an opportunity to show we can compete with the best of the best.

It could be a rude awakening and a proper hiding. Or it could, just maybe, be another little miracle.

Bring it on.

COYR.

Progress takes time. Or at least, that’s what they used to say.

Wrexham haved ruined this maxim. Our unrelenting plough up the pyramid has proven that this saying is just a saying. When momentum builds, sometimes there is simply no stopping it.

Parky’s Fast & Furious-style vehicle is defying all expectation and logic, with its driver leaning on the accelerator with a demented look in his eye. Those stood at the Championship pitstop - waving frantically at him to pull in and end this madness once and for all - are better off getting out of the way. He doesn’t seem to have any plans to brake.

As if a screaming run towards the play-offs wasn’t enough, Wrexham are also racing ahead in the country’s most prestigious cup competition thanks to Josh Windass - who marked one of the biggest goals of the season the way he always does: Pulling a face as though he’s swallowed a fly.

Surely, he was happy on the inside?

In any case, the fairytale story keeps producing new chapters much to the chagrin of our rival supporters - and with results so frustratingly good on the field, these fans have shifted their crosshairs away from Dinosaur Parky and our Average Squad towards our home ground.

The new jibe is to label Y Cae Ras a “dump”, “shit-tip”, or “dive”. The biggest culprits so far have been Millwall fans, many of whom turned up at our recent fixture looking like extras from the Battle of Helm’s Deep and spent the majority of their visit huddled on the staircases when they had perfectly good seats mere centimetres away. Not even Tottenham Hotspur’s majestic arena can serve up a good matchday experience if you spend it on the stairs, but still, to a group of fans used to stepping inside behemothic stadiums, Y Cae Ras probably did look like it could do with a little TLC.

Alas, there is nothing we can do about that yet. As much as we’d love our builders to have their own construction-style version of Paul Mullin - slapping bricks down at a record-setting pace whilst humming “F*** the Tories” under his breath - no such person exists, and the new Kop won’t be ready for some time yet.

That gaping hole on one side of Y Cae Ras was a harmless blemish back in the National League, but up here in the Championship it is treated like an eyesore which hampers our kerb appeal. It’ll get fixed eventually. But this is one part of the journey where we will simply have to sit tight and wait. That isn’t very Wrexham, but that is the way it needs to be.

If you thought Millwall were uncouth in their assessment of Y Cae Ras - penning typo-riddled essays across social media like angry Londoners writing scathing Amazon reviews of flat caps that turned up a slightly darker shade of chestnut than the picture promised - prepare yourselves for worse when Chelsea visit.

Blues fans are West London’s answer to the Bushwackers in more ways than one, and having spent the past few decades causing bother at the greatest arenas in Europe, you can bet we will hear all about how unkempt our lovely little ground is here in North Wales and how they are “desperate to go home” from minute one.

But it’s all good. For now, we’re happy to keep singin’ in our “dump”. Loudly and proudly. And that Chelsea tie presents an opportunity to bring the whole place down.

In the meantime we have Ipswich again, and fresh off the back of a good draw in Bristol, there is every reason to keep smiling. Perhaps we should have won, but we are still one point closer.

Redevelopment in Wrexham is coming slowly, day by day. But the football club’s renaissance is happening right now in front of our very eyes at breakneck speed.

Be thankful that you’re getting to witness it.

COYR.

“Is it this one?”

Bang.

“What about this one here?”

Bang.

“Could be this one…”

Bang.

Even for a car journey through London - a place where the streets are full of blaring horns and profanity bellowed out from behind windshield glass - our Uber through Shepherd’s Bush the other week was deafening.

A pinging noise on the taxi dashboard screamed that something in the car was wrong, and by request of the driver, each passenger took it in turns to crack their door and slam it shut to see if that would halt the din.

It turned out to be the last place we’d thought to look, and after a quick dart out into standstill traffic to slam the boot shut properly, we were on our way again - this time in peace and quiet.

Wrexham’s season has been a lot like that trip. All year, we’ve been opening doors at every level of the division - the lower reaches, the bottom half, the top 12 - and none of them successfully stopped the whine of critics from around the FL (and some closer to home) about how this squad was wrong and we were half-decent at best. But the team has pulled ajar the last entranceway any of us expected to the play-off spots, and the screeching has suddenly stopped.

Promotion talk is now happening with tongues removed from cheeks, and the fact that the Reds are actually, genuinely, bewilderingly in contention for a Premier League place - with about 66% of the season gone - is almost as bonkers as the manner in which we got here in the first instance.

Take the case of QPR (A). For most clubs, these miracle last-gasp wins don’t come around that often. At Wrexham, we seem to get them every couple of months.

Ollie Rathbone’s thunderbolt - which sent some Reds leaping into one another’s arms and left others dangling from the gigantic pillars that prop up Loftus Road - prompted the club to produce a highlight reel of all the stoppage time winners we have witnessed in the Hollywood era. It was an embarrassment of riches. And the celebrations have only gotten more berserk as the years have passed.

QPR was particularly mental. If celebrity fan Louis Theroux was in attendance, he is surely carving out a storyboard for his next documentary on the cult of Reds fandom: Musing over the bizarre phenomena of 1,760 largely ordinary people falling into a state of unbridled delirium the second Rathbone’s strike hit the net.

Loftus Road was left wobbling on its axis after the Red Army visit, but not all the games can be like that. Crucially, this Wrexham team know how to win ugly, too.

Sheffield Wednesday (A) was a routine three points that ultimately amount to the same total as any stoppage time victory, and whilst it was a very different kettle of fish to QPR, visiting Hillsborough was again a case of trying doors.

As Parky’s team rapped on the Sheff Weds defence, this author was busy banging on the closed gates outside the ground - attempting to re-enter Hillsborough after being kindly allowed to shift the car (which was perilously close to incurring a parking fine so big it would cause Jeff Bezos to spit out his champagne) by a reasonable steward. The problem was that the staff member was nowhere to be found upon my return, which meant a few minutes of thumping on random doors like a doomed character in a zombie film begging to be let into the sanctuary.

Around this point, a pair of Wednesday fans come tumbling out of one of the exits.

“Yer not tryin’ to get back IN are yeh?” they asked, baffled at the fact that anyone would want to return to watch the uneventful game unfolding on the field.

Someone in hi-vis eventually - and reluctantly - answered my call, Sam Smith unlocked a defence yet again, and the relentless door banging continued long into the week, as Parky went knocking on at clubs around the country to pad out his new squad for the final third of the season.

There are two quality players available for each position in a red shirt now. That is frighteningly good strength in depth and every reason for optimism as we go into one of the biggest games of the season against fellow play-off hopefuls and notorious maniacs Millwall.

The last time the Bushwackers came to North Wales was for a promotion party: Invading Y Cae Ras pitch more times in a single game than Reds fans have in the past three seasons. A few hundred even spilled out of the away end and into the MRS.

The word on the grapevine is their fans have pledged to “destroy” Wrexham’s city centre on Saturday, and any police officer unfortunate enough to be drafted in for the matchday patrol may seriously be contemplating pulling a sickie to avoid the mardy scenes that could transpire in town.

Both on and off the pitch, this is going to be a hot-tempered tie. So, open the door and take a seat. It’s all to play for.

COYR.

This has been a week where we’ve lost at home to a team in the relegation zone in one game and conceded a 90th minute equaliser in another. Yet neither of those disappointing results qualifies as the worst news of the past seven days.

That accolade goes to the announcement made last weekend: Confirmation that our captain James McClean is heading back to Derry after nearly 100 games in a red shirt.

“Best for all parties”, many have said. True enough, Macca wasn’t the best player in the squad this season, nor was he an essential cog in the Championship engine that Parky is permanently fine-tuning to push for play-offs and an impossible fourth promotion. But his departure is nonetheless a regretful moment in recent history.

We’re an anamoly for feeling that way. Not many clubs have been disappointed to see the back of McClean. Wigan liked him, but more often than not he was seen as more trouble than we he was worth. On occasion he was even booed by his own fans. But all this criticism was rarely, if ever, to do with his performances. A contrarian he might have been, but McClean was Mr Consistent on the pitch: Clocking in solid showings in over half a century’s worth of matches in almost every position.

At the age of 36, he is still a specimen of a player in greater shape than many of his peers, and it’s hard to remember any time he hit the field looking unfit or unfocused. He set the standard, fitness-wise. A muscular, mean-mugging midfielder who would bust a lung to chase a loose ball - taking the man if he couldn’t win it (ala Joey Jones).

“I’m boring,” McClean insisted on several occasions during interviews, and whilst that may or may not be true for his personal life, he was a permanent source of entertainment in football, strapped to a giant boulder of controversy which he carried around with him for his entire career.

Often referred to as the pantomime villain and a bottomless gold mine for media clicks, McClean’s poppy stance meant he was subject to vociferous abuse from the terraces at every English football stadium he played in for 15 years. Thousands of people have hurled a thousand things at him during that time - from IRA jibes to cigarette lighters. The attacks got so bad he was granted special dispensation from the FA to leave the field via the shortest route to the tunnel to minimise the number of missiles being hurled from the crowd.

But he never asked for that. And he never blinked. McClean wasn’t scared of anyone and gave it back as good as he got: Happily playing the part that his Bond adversary looks and un-English accent suggested.

Not many players would dare blow kisses to Shrewsbury fans or lamp goading Cardiff supporters in the club car park or catch a cup thrown at them from the Birmingham stands and nonchalantly pretend to take a sip, but McClean wasn’t just any ordinary player. He was our beloved bastard in a team that everyone outside of Wrexham AFC already loved to hate.

With all the Hollywood jealousy bubbling around the club, there was perhaps no better player to bring in. From the moment he arrived in 2023, it was Wrexham and McClean against the world.

It’s difficult to know whether the boos would have travelled with Macca if he’d vanished from the internet. He courted controversy, too, let’s not pretend otherwise: You don’t post on social media about Rotherham fans “stinking of piss” or getting “a good point on the road at the Toughshit stadium” (rather than Toughsheet) if you’re not trying to get a reaction.

McClean’s old manager Martin O’Neill (the man whom Celtic recently had to approach hat-in-hand to stop the green side of Glasgow going into meltdown) once urged the player to come off social media as it only ever got him into trouble. But a leopard doesn’t change its spots, and in truth, part of McClean seemed to enjoy the ruckus that takes place around the edges of the game as much as he liked playing it.

Loose lips sink ships, so they say. But McClean was unperturbed. During a live appearance on the Ben Foster podcast he even divulged Wrexham transfer fees - which the club had been keeping under its hat - but in the same conversation did show that he was capable of exercising discipline when required, stopping short of naming the players he “hated the most” in football, besides dropping a couple of hints. Detectives in the crowd made educated guesses.

Whenever a cult hero leaves “the building” - as is the preferred nomenclature in the modern football - it’s always tempting to pick out the top moments. With McClean there are too many to choose from. His goal at Blackpool, maybe? His antics at Shrewsbury, perhaps? The time he rinsed Bradley Ihionvien for that embarrassing video with the same N-Sync song? Flipping off the Leicester fans as he waved goodbye to Y Cae Ras for the final time? Everyone will have their own favourite.

McClean’s family have welcomed a “new chapter” that their return to Derry will bring, and as one RP poster pointed out, he has “boiled enough blood over here to relax for the last couple of seasons back home”.

His hometown will surely welcome him back with open arms, and it looks like he still has a few seasons left in him yet. But what will come for McClean after that?

We’ll know about it when it happens, that’s for sure. Wherever he goes, the headlines follow.

So long, Macca.

“F*** off you Welsh t***!” shrieked the Blackburn fans at their fellow Englishman Sam Smith as he scored the first goal of the Championship in 2026, before piling the same treatment onto Ollie Rathbone, who was probably born in the same hospital as themselves.

Three days earlier, Preston North End supporters had been similarly bad-tempered, hurling vapes at Josh Windass who’d trotted over to their side of the pitch to chat to the linesman.

Is there something in the water in Lancashire? Lots of Rovers and PNE fans were choleric across our festive fixtures - both during and after the games. Only their residents who avoided the mains supply and stuck to bottled beer during betwixtmas seemed in much better spirits: With tipsy PNE fans shrugging off their 2-1 loss to join Reds on the dancefloor in Chequers rather than punching expletive-laden, error-riddled posts onto fan forums on the trains home.

In reality, United Utilities probably aren’t to blame for the sour taste on tongues across the Red Rose County. This bitterness has more than likely been bred by inertia: With both Rovers and PNE trapped in the same league for a decade, save for Blackburn’s brief dalliance with L1.

It might seem nuts to us, throwing your toys out the pram at the prospect of another season of Championship(!) football. But it’s horses for courses, isn’t it? When you’ve won the most coveted trophy in the country - as both these clubs have done - reaching for anything less can appear unambitious, even if PNE’s last title win was around the same time a midwife was wrapping up a baby Charlie Chaplin.

What’s more, when you’re stuck in a rut, it is particularly easy to resent a team in perpetual ascent like Wrexham - who are defying all definitions of what a good team actually is by winning most of our matches without playing like Brazil.

We are the hot air balloon of the EFL, quietly floating up, up, and away into high altitudes past the burly Boeings and swanky drones that roam the Championship skies. The fact we’ve risen this far is incredible, but you can’t always appreciate or respect something - no matter how unique it might be - when it’s simply getting in the way.

Lancashire is sick to the back teeth of Wrexham getting in its eye line, but they’re not alone. The East Midlands will also spend all January cursing North Wales’ ascent.

Derby were dispatched comfortably on their home turf, whilst their neighbours came to Y Cae Ras in the cup hoping to do what their bitter rivals and fellow Brian Clough acolytes could not. Alas, not even the mighty (albeit down on their luck) Nottingham Forest could pop the Big Red Balloon.

Our FA Cup scrapbook is heavier than The Yellow Pages now, but that Forest game must go in there somewhere: A tie that morphed from certain victory, to certain defeat, then something in between, culminating in a Big Moment for Big Arthur whose quiet fist-pump at the winning penalty save was the most animated we’ve seen him since pulling on a Reds shirt.

With such momentum and delirium dancing around Wrexham right now, Saturday seems like a long time to wait until a fresh fixture. But from the looks of those tired legs during extra-time, it is needed.

Norwich City (H) is next, a game which would have been a frightening proposition just a few weeks back. Now, it looks like a golden opportunity to win six in a row.

Iesu Mawr, we’re in serious danger of joining the hive mind of several other clubs in this division: Regarding another season in the Championship as something that’s actually slightly disappointing.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The climb is long and there is much more to go. For now, let’s just enjoy the view.

COYR.

Modern football takes the piss out of its supporters on a regular basis.

To The Powers That Be, we are nothing but numbers. Cash cows to be milked dry and suckers to be ripped off like tourists who climb into taxis with “broken” fare meters at an international airport.

Just look at the evidence. SKY is putting YouTubers on its expert panels; the FA Cup has scrapped its beloved replays; and FIFA is listing tickets for the next World Cup at the same price as a property deposit.

We’ve had to put up with some proper nonsense. But still, the Grinch-like move to steal away football fans’ festive fixtures this season felt particularly cruel.

Since time immemorial, the football crowd has always got to enjoy two Christmases: One on the 25^th, and another on Boxing Day (revelling in a bumper day of sport from noon ‘til night-time).

But not anymore. Teams in the top division had their favourite day of the year spoiled by the Prem’s decision to push back almost all the Boxing Day games, sparking outrage and fears we could see a similar change further down the pyramid.

But December came, and the EFL schedule remained mercifully untouched. Our Second Christmas had been spared, and Wrexham had the best slot of the day against a side we’d relish beating. Sheff Utd at 5:30pm. It was, on paper, the best version of the best fixture of the season.

Yet, by the time it arrived, the Red Army couldn’t be less enthusiastic. The mood on the morning of Boxing Day 2025 was a bundle of nerves, and as visiting Blades slinked into local boozers and talked up their own chances, they received very little pushback. Our confidence had been sapped.

Why the long faces? Well, we had some ugly waterfowl to thank for that.

Swansea (A) was only one game, but the result wreaked more emotional havoc in North Wales than any other match in recent memory. The night was a cocktail of depression – an inept performance, a tactical farce, a humiliating howler, a surrendering of bragging rights, and a fifth game without a win. It haunted the Red Army, filling our nightmares with images of Arthur’s gloves smeared in butter, and robbed us of the annual excitement that so often accompanies Boxing Day.

Quotes around the town city in the run-up to the 26th included: Parky might have lost the dressing room; I’m not sure I can be bothered going anymore; it’s time for a new manager; we haven’t got the right players; they don’t look arsed; we’ll never beat Sheffield.

And those are the ones most suitable for print.

If Parky was visited by three Wrexham-supporting Spirits over Christmas, he’d have been shown the Galacticos-style drubbings in the National League by the Ghost of Christmas Past (reminding him of how we used to play); the angry screams of the Mold Road to bring on subs before the sixty-minute mark by the Ghost of Christmas Present; and an image of a scattered crowd at Y Cae Ras watching silently on relegation day to League One by the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come: A warning of what the future may hold if the wins elude us.

But instead of flinging open his window on Christmas Day 2025 and barking at an unsuspecting youth zipping around on freshly unwrapped e-scooter, demanding to know “what the fanny f***ing date is today?!”, our gaffer just got on with life as normal. The team sheet proved he had experienced no real spiritual awakening, instead making very small tweaks which did little to inject fresh confidence into a despondent Red Army. George Thomason at wing-back: Was that really going to work?

The scoreboard at half-time read Wrexham 2-3 Sheff Utd, and the air of defeatism in the Tech End concourse was palpable.

“Well, we said this was going to happen,” one fan muttered, slurping on a watery e-bar lager, before adding with a twinkle: “But maybe it will turn out like the Coventry game…”

Half-drunk he may have been, but it turned out this Red could see better into the future than any Christmas Carol ghost.

An epic turnaround spearheaded by a magnificent Thomason - who dared to suggest he could be a viable solution to the eternal wing-back problem - sent a previously suspicious Y Cae Ras into raptures, with a Boxing Day classic carved out before our very eyes.

We had our Christmas back.

The Sheff Utd result did as much to boost morale as the Swansea debacle did to damage it, but it might be time to accept that Parky is not going to have any Christmas Carol moments when things go wrong. His stubborn refusal to tear apart the squad in the midst of a bumpy run makes him about as popular as Ebeneezer Scrooge in North Wales during some weeks, but Parky is just not an epiphany kind of person. He has his system and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

This Championship team is a project in the making, and there will be no overnight magic. That’s not quite as narratively fulfilling and poetic as a Dickens novella (or another promotion in a row), but it is still producing some cherished chapters for us all.

This season has had its tricky moments. But when it’s been good, it’s been really good. Boxing Days don’t come much better - or memorable - than that.

Happy Christmas, Reds.

It’s a bizarre experience stepping inside a stadium at the very same moment a goal goes in.

There you are scanning your ticket - one foot in the real world, another in the Land of Football - when the noise goes up.

The arena belts out a roar that rushses through to the turnstile and meets your eardrum like air puffed through a seashell. That thick, breathy, and distorted sound hangs heavy for a second… and you make a snap judgment as to whether this cheer is good or bad news.

For the briefest of moments, you’re in this strange nether realm: Experiencing a Schrödinger’s Cat version of football, where your side is simultaneously both winning and losing.

Last Saturday afternoon, half a dozen Red Army stragglers barrelling through the turnstiles at a drenched Deepdale four minutes behind schedule experienced such a moment.

They stopped and pondered, wondering if it was us or them who’d found the net.

Then, the familiar sound of the Carnaval de Paris came rolling down the stairs to meet us - and we knew. Preston 0-1 Wrexham.

Of course, the confirmation of one state leaves you trapped between another: Joyous at the goal, pissed off that you missed it. All you can do in times like these is put it into context: Failing to witness Kieffer Moore’s scruffy tap-in down the far end at Preston in the rain doesn’t rank anywhere near as high on the FOMO pain meter as fans who booked a holiday on the date we played Boreham Wood, for instance.

Still, it was a big goal: A terrific blow that got the Red Army all riled up and left PNE’s fans flat as the potatoes in their butter pies. It was all set up nicely for us to take the game by the scruff of the neck - which perhaps explains some of the prickliness felt at full-time.

“Another draw”, grumbled some Reds from behind their hoods, moodily splashing out of Deepdale in hasty search of the warmth of Pats Coaches and Preston’s pubs.

Was that a harsh reaction? The hardy souls who ventured over to the Humber four days later probably would’ve swapped their old kits signed by Karl Connolly to have come home with just another draw.

Hull (A) was grim, but in the aftermath, we tried to put it into context again. It wasn’t long ago that you’d leave a Wrexham game feeling triumphant if you’d seen someone take a shot at goal. A missed penalty was a luxury. There was a dead rubber at Solihull during the non-league days when half the away end spent most the afternoon in the bar, where there were more impressive feats of athleticism on show by the blokes keeping down 20 units of Carlsberg.

But that feels like a long time ago now. And going into Watford, there was a sense no one in Red was wholly satisfied. The ambition is just too big now. During a week when you’re welcoming fresh investors who have pushed the value of the club up to “£350 million”, you can’t exactly shrug off a draw and a defeat and declare: “Ah well, nobody died…”

Besides, Watford’s players were doing their best to convince the crowd that they were indeed passing away on the pitch - playing possum until the referee got tired of their nonsense and told them it was time to stop dicking around.

The Hornets - true to their name - were the most annoying side we’ve played all season. Most of the game seemed to go their way - but they still couldn’t beat us. Those who gave up and left early to beat the Mold Road traffic missed Rathbone’s rescue act - proving that up here in this high-stakes tier, missing even five minutes leads to FOMO.

We head into these final few games of 2025 knowing that this year will go down as our most successful one as a football club - on and off the pitch (with the investment and spades in the ground for the Kop) - for decades. But we’re not all dancing around the garden setting off fireworks, lassoing our shirts around our heads.

Are we existing in an another nether zone here? One where we can be thrilled and frustrated all at once with the current state of play?

Apparently so.

Nowadays, there is more space to fall down than there is to go up. But the heads of everyone at Wrexham AFC are screwed on tight, all facing the same direction: Swansea (A) in the foreground and the blurry outline of the play-offs in the periphery.

It’s the right direction in which to look. Spend too much time looking in the rear view mirror and you’re only going to crash.

Onwards, forwards, upwards.

COYR.

Football fandom involves putting ourselves through a lot of pain. It’s unnecessary, too. Not much harm would come to us from reclining on the sofa with a cup of tea watching the box (unless The Big Bang Theory comes on), but instead we choose to spend most of our Saturday afternoons sat on plastic seats in arctic temperatures whilst swearing at a man with a whistle in his mouth.

Huge portions of being a football supporter means signing up for torment. It’s what makes the good moments - when they come - feel so sweet.

But there is masochism, and there is having a death wish. By daring to talk about Wrexham reaching the Prem, Reds may be living dangerously in Charles Bronson territory.

Whilst it is still too early to seriously contemplate Mission: Premier League reaching its conclusion, it is not too soon to fantasise about it. Parky’s squad has proven itself a hardy sort in the second tier, despite being the new boys. Sat mid-table after 16 matches, it’s not entirely deranged to suggest that we could be in with a shout of qualifying for a play-off place that could lead to a quartet of successive promotions.

Even those who really hate us - and there’s plenty of them - wouldn’t be so bothered if we do go up again. Because it could easily end in tears. The reality for many sides who clamber up from The Championship to the palace of the Premier League - wide-eyed and staggeringly unprepared - often becomes very clear, very quickly. The best part can often be getting there, rather than being there.

Since the Premier League morphed into its current composition of 20 teams, almost half of the promoted clubs from the second tier have been relegated immediately. Many of those who survive their debut season go down within two or three years.

Our opponents this weekend, Ipswich Town, have proven both the exception and the rule. In 24/25 they were cannon fodder - winning just four times all season. But they were also the last club to finish in the top five straight after promotion via the play-offs in 00/01.

Wishing for the Premier League is perhaps a fool’s errand. But given all that’s happened so far under Hollywood, it’s not hard to make another leap of faith and picture a day when we might creep into those knockout stages and find ourselves punching above our weight with football’s elite.

Of course, it was far more challenging to get our heads wrapped around that idea on a weekend where we were missing vital players. Big Kieffer has a niggle, and Ohh Issa Kabore had it even worse - having travelled 3,000 miles on international duty just to tear his hamstring, meaning he’s had to limp home to Manchester for six weeks of rehab.

There was a nervousness among the Red Army given the big holes in the line-up, but this did pave way for big opportunities. Sam Smith got a rare start up top and Jimmy Mac - who has spent his last few weeks punching Cardiff fans and confessing to a member of Westlife he’s fed up with footy and is thinking about swapping it for boxing - also joining Parky’s preferred XI.

But in a forgettable draw at Portman Road, it proved to be a trusty member of the old guard who delivered the standout showing and grabbed all the headlines. Arthur Okonkwo once again proved he is more than good enough to be our first-choice ‘keeper, despite a big question mark hanging over his head in August. Ipswich could have played until New Year and still not found a way past him.

True, it wasn’t exactly dreamland stuff on the pitch, and we had our big man between the sticks to thank for taking home a point, but it was a proper, boring, adult point taken from a top team away from home and another step in the right direction.

There’s so much behind-the-scenes grunt work that goes into achieving dreams. If we ever get to the Prem, this will go down in the diary as a decent day’s work that paved the way for what we’ve always wanted.

That dream could sound a bit like a death wish. But we have done so much of the unthinkable already. Why not think big?

COYR.

—

New Wrexham merch on the block

There’s enough Wrexham merch out there these days to fill St Giles Parish ten times over. Even players have got in on the act - with Ollie Palmer selling t-shirts and hoodies with WREXHAM smeared across the fabric despite the fact he’s plying his trade in the land of the Magic Roundabout nowadays.

Still, there’s something irresistibly unique about this new collection from LL11 that separates it from the herd: Sporting silhouettes of club heroes in big moments, all immortalised in print.

A few design examples are below, but you can view the full range at: https://ll11.teemill.com/

A strange, putrid smell hung heavy in the Tech End tunnel ahead of Tuesday’s night all-Welsh ding-dong. It was something rancid - like someone had blended sour milk with sweat and the contents of the toilet basins in Penny Black.

Where it had come from, who knows. It could have been the stench of smugness wafting from the Cardiff away fans’ coach - which their vainglorious supporters wear like a badge of pride due to their status as our shared country’s capital. But whatever it was, it smelled like freshly baked bread compared with what we had to inhale during the 95 minutes of football that followed.

The foul odour that Wrexham’s performance left on Y Cae Ras pitch filled our noses and followed us all the way home. It was so strong we couldn’t even get it out of our clothes, no matter how hard we scrubbed, and it stayed with us all week.

It’s difficult to remember a night in recent Wrexham history that left so many of us, so angry. You win some, you lose some: That’s football and that’s fine. But the lack of effort - in a game that presented not just an opportunity for bragging rights but also a major cup quarter-final - was a kick-the-chair-in-front-of-you kind of unforgivable.

2-1 it finished, and Cardiff emerged as the Kings of Wales. At least, for a night. But if you ask them, they always were and always will be. That’s how they are. And they had a good time proving their point.

“I think this game maybe meant more to [Wrexham] than it did to us,” their gigantic striker Yousef Salech sneered down the camera during his post-match interview, omitting the fact that his supporters had careened around the away end like cocaine-addled rats in a box following his goal.

One look at our performance shows that Salech’s statement - as hollow-hearted as it might have been - had no basis in reality. Most of the men in Red didn’t seem to care if we won or not.

Thomason did everything he could to be substituted and failed. Coady chose to wallop the ball into the stands so he didn’t have to use his ailing legs. Longman apparently decided he could no longer be bothered and trotted around the pitch like a pony in a sunlit meadow. The only one to come out with any real credit was Burton - who punched the air with infectious euphoria when we scored before having to spend the rest of the tie screaming at his players to sort their heads out.

When your third-choice keeper is the one who cares the most, a 2-1 defeat is about as good as you’re going to get. And indeed, it could have been so much worse. Wrexham backed off the Blues like they were scared of catching something, meaning Burton (and the woodwork) had a busy evening.

We were lucky to lose by one.

Parky’s team selection - puzzling at first glance and infuriating in hindsight - came in for more criticism than any individual during the post-match autopsy, but our gaffer preferred to press on rather than pick over the roadkill.

“I stand by [my decision],” he mumbled with the conviction of a field mouse dangling in a trap after lazily swiping at some second-rate bait.

Even those firmly in Parky’s corner were struggling to find a way to defend his choices against Cardiff. The logic of having to rotate players is sound. But this was one of the most insane cup team selections since Brian Carey fielded Levi Mackin and Conall Murtagh in a blockbuster game against Aston Villa.

The Cardiff humbling was doubly damaging in that it robbed us of a tie with Chelsea and left everyone under-enthused for a mercilessly quick turnaround for the toughest match all season - with visitors Coventry having morphed into the Brazil of the Championship.

Time heals all wounds, but not enough of it had passed before the Sky Blues turned up on Friday. All of a sudden, we understood what it must be like to be a Chester or Shrewsbury fan these days - spinning through the turnstile with a pit in your stomach as you fear the worst.

Parky did at least drop the biggest culprits of the Cardiff farce - a decision that led to Wrexham playing more football in 30 seconds against Cov than they did in 95 minutes on Tuesday. Even 1-0 down at half-time, the mood was brighter than it had been for days.

“Better…” shrugged most of the Red Army as they waddled around the Tech End concourse, wondering whether they should dare to pray that we could actually take some points off the unbeaten league leaders. It’s the hope that kills you, but there was definitely a sniff, a whisker, a glimmer of belief that was purifying Y Cae Ras of that open sewer stink released into the terraces days before.

Whatever Parky said at the break seemed to bang the expensive air filtration system of Windass & Moore into action, and by the time Kieffer had completed the perfect hat-trick, the Red Army was breathing clean, fresh air again - leaving us as giddy as if we’d been hooked up to oxygen tanks for two hours.

The gag-inducing scent had gone. We were off with the fairies. And everything was bendigedig.

Fans staggered down the Mold Road unable to comprehend how we’d managed to turn in both our worst and best performances four days apart. But in the end we all just gave up trying to work it out, deciding instead to seize the shoulders of fellow fans and belt out the Kieffer song all the way into town.

Is Parky forgiven? Was Cardiff worth the pain? Are we going to be alright?

There will be time to ponder the answers to these questions. But it seems a much better idea right now to just sit tight, breathe deep, and enjoy that fresh air again - watching Kieffer’s trio on repeat.

Ahh.

Have a great week, Reds.

Wrexham borrows as much from American culture as it lends its own these days. For every one of our Transatlantic cousins googling “iechyd da”, there is a Welshman somewhere sipping Four Walls in front of Disney+.

Five years on, we’re still learning about one another: Swapping phrases and ideas to the point where we might as well be exchanging copies of the Wrexham Leader for the New Yorker.

That’s largely a good thing. But it does feel like our squad might be taking one American-coined phrase a little too seriously at the moment.

It was famous Murica writer James Thurber who apparently reeled off the aphorism: ‘One martini is just right. Two is too many. Three is never enough.’

As insightful as this might be for any Turf-dwellers (substituting martini with Madri, of course) aiming to avoid a morning with their heads plunged in the toilet bowl, it is remarkably less useful for our team: Who are earning their wages playing a game where the whole point is to indulge a little more than the rival group in the bar.

Nonetheless, Parky’s lads are resolutely sticking to the ‘one and one only’ principle. Even when the most delicious chances are placed in front of them, they refuse (even if their faces are visibly tinged with regret in the moments after they let the opportunity go begging).

This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we’d racked up a long list of 1-0 victories. But as this season has shown, one goal is rarely enough to earn all three points at this level. It’s only worked once - at home to Oxford - and this hesitancy to let loose is now making good results feel a lot worse than they actually are.

Saturday’s draw at Middlesbrough is the perfect case in point. Before kick-off, many Reds would have kissed your feet if you’d promised them a point. But when the final whistle blew, there was an undeniable tinge of regret hanging heavier from Red shirts than the polished-off parmos.

Kieffer Moore needs to put that header away - and his failure to do so is the latest in a growing list of examples in which Wrexham could have turned one point into three if they’d just thrown the dice a little more.

Parky is not a gambling man: More like the kind of chap who puts $1 on Red and $1 on Black when he is dragged to the casinos on those end-of-season Vegas trips. And diverting from his dependable approach now - when we’re matching the best teams in the division who will probably be in the Premier League by spring - could potentially be an own goal of Jon Walters magnitude.

Parky’s safe pair of hands are what guided us to the promised land and it seems sensible to trust the system. His ability to keep a cool head when the rest of us can’t is the reason why we are where we are. But when we keep getting so close, so often, at such a high level, it is only human to wonder: What would happen if we really started going for it?

In any case, this dilemma will fix itself on Tuesday. Hesitancy isn’t an option in the Carabao Cup, with any games still level after 90 minutes going directly to a penalty shootout. And nobody ever wants that.

The added prospect of taking home the ‘Best Team in Wales’ title and the extra bite in the air from the terraces will also force this team - consciously or not - to play more on the edge than perhaps they have been.

This is go hard or go home time. And it’s going to be good to watch.

COYR.

A “break” is usually a good thing: A precious opportunity for rest and relaxation where you leave reality and your problems behind, at least for a little while.

Football’s spin on the autumn retreat is international break: A time when league action pauses and gives players who aren’t representing their national sides the chance to enjoy some time off from being screamed by the terrace folk and put their feet up (apart from James McClean, who probably spends this period banging the ball into his back garden goal net and doing a shhhhhh celebration in front of the puzzled hedgehogs and blackbirds, just for the adrenaline hit).

International break is also probably quite a welcome period for the Wrexham coaching staff, who can revisit problems that had been giving them tunnel vision with fresh eyes, and return to training days later with a new solution - like encasing Liberato Cacace in a plastic bubble so he doesn’t injure himself for the 20th time in three months.

Wounded star Ollie Rathbone - our wind-up toy that has had its string snapped - too, will be appreciative of the adjournment, using the extra time to recover and put himself back in the frame for a place in the squad.

But, as beneficial as it might be for other parties, a lot of fans don’t know what to do with themselves when the division goes on holiday. These breaks are an unsettling part of the season, leaving us lost in some liminal space like a digital clone in Black Mirror’s White Christmas, wandering and waiting for something that feels like it may never actually come back.

If the players and coaches return with clarity and clear heads, supporters stagger back onto the terraces dazed and confused, having lost all sense of perspective trying to remember what our opinions - so strong, clear and explicit just 15 days ago - actually were.

Fortunately, football muscle memory is very much a thing, and from the moment the whistle screeched in the city of six towns - unsure which of these Stoke City were actually in - all our sentiments came rushing back.

Parky brings subs on at the wrong time. Broadhead needs to start. We need another striker. Etc.

Stoke wasn’t the ideal game to resume our season. Our record against the Potters is absolutely honking - having only beaten them on one occasion since 1926. Nonetheless, a big Red Army trundled down with genuine belief we could at least get something from the tie. This Wrexham side isn’t perfect - but we always score, after all.

Or at least, we did. After Ryan Longman missed a chance that a hungover Michael Bakare could have put away, and a Wales winger fluked in a cross to perform a slightly cringey Fortnite-esque celebration in front of the Red Army (who, to be fair, had been booing him), it was clear we were in for a bad afternoon.

As one RP poster put it: “everyone who wasn’t on an international break played like they’d been in Benidorm for a week.” 1-0 it finished. Our goal-streak record ended, and our long list of losses in Staffordshire stretched on into another year.

The players looked rusty, the coaches looked frustrated, and the fans all looked dismayed. It turned out that time away from the Championship did none of us any good in the end.

If Wales had won last week, we would have had something to take away from the much-maligned league breather. But the international break lived up to its reputation as an interloping harbinger of gloom, leaving us bored, then bitter. Just like it always does.

There is something of a silver lining, though. The next two weeks present four opportunities to see the Reds in action - and for the team to put things right again - before the month is out: A six-pointer, a big trip to a famous ground, a Welsh derby, and a tie against the table-toppers, in that order.

It would have been a mouthwatering lineup at any time of year. But after the long lull and the Stoke stinker behind us, there’s plenty to get excited about again. Starting with Oxford under the lights.

COYR.