Apparently, there are still dark corners of the internet who feel Phil Parkinson isn’t the man for the Wrexham job. If you are one of those people, allow me to lead you blinking into the light.
Nobody could have left the SToK Cae Ras on Tuesday feeling anything but pride, unless you were in the away end. To be fair, Crawley had nothing to be ashamed about: they showed that they are a very good side indeed, but there’s not much you can do when you’re faced with the sort of performance we put on.
If you’re only as good as your last performance, we’re one hell of a team. Phil Parkinson deserves a lot of credit for the way he prepared his side for the match, especially given that it was a midweek game so there wasn’t much time to set things up.
He’s established such a well-grooved basic set-up, though, that the players can absorb little tweaks and adaptations easily as they’re known the under-lying structure so well.
Take the impressive win at Grimsby: we changed our midfield set-up from the usual trio to a double pivot with Elliot Lee searching for space ahead of them when we had the ball. That alteration was achieved so smoothly I didn’t notice it at first, whereas when we’d tried to introduce Lee to that position when he first joined us, it didn’t work.
Lee has now had so many hours working with Parkinson, Steve Parkin and the rest of the coaching staff that he now knows, as second nature, what his duties are, with and without the ball, and how small changes to the shape of the team affect his role.
Coming into the Crawley game I was wary. Nobody has won more away games than them in the whole of League Two, and they were fresh from a spectacular 4-1 thumping of Mansfield.
Attention was focussed on their manager, Scott Lindsey, who has done a remarkable job on a shoestring budget. Through a combination of astute scouting, data analysis and coaching, he has put together a team which appears to be much greater than its parts, rejuvenating players’ careers and giving opportunities to those who were previously seen as non-league plodders.
If there’s any justice, it’ll be either Parkinson or Lindsey who wins the manager of the season award for League Two.
Lindsey is known for his meticulous preparation for matches, and made subtle alterations from his strategy at Mansfield, most notable tilting his midfield quartet from a box to a diamond.
The problem was that Parkinson had anticipated the alteration and had a team who were ready to repel Town and take advantage of the spaces they would leave.
Clearly, our players were aware that Crawley would enjoy long periods of possession. That’s their style of play, and you’ve got to be patient against such an approach, pressing judiciously.
As it happens, Parkinson has constructed a side which does this exceptionally well. We’ve seen this consistently over the last couple of years, with the impressive wins over Mansfield and Notts County the obvious examples.
We don’t panic if we don’t have the ball. Instead we remain compact and force the opposition into cul-de-sacs where we can suddenly converge on them and either win the ball or force an error.
It’s like those fish on the ocean floor that hide patiently under the sand until some poor, unsuspecting little creature comes by. Before they know what’s happened to them the predator has pounced and it’s all over.
Our strikers didn’t tend to press when the Crawley back three had the ball, instead helping to congest the middle of the pitch and block the passing lanes. That meant the Crawley defenders spent a lot of time passing passively to each other, looking for non-existent gaps, until one of them was forced into an ambitious pass which gave the ball back to us.
When we won the ball back, the speed and quality of our counter-attacks was sensational. When Crawley got bodies back, we were patient and intelligent in our build-up.
Parkinson must have taken such satisfaction from the first half goals, which perfectly illustrated both approaches.
The first was all about patience, and using the position of the ball to drag defenders around the pitch. We went into a pocket on the left flank, then withdrew but, instead of switching play, returned quite swiftly to the same area on the left. Crawley’s defence were drawn to far across by our return to the flank, leaving space at the far post for Ryan Barnett, who had been holding back, to know make a perfectly-timed run. Lee looped in a beauty of a cross, and the rest is history!
The second was transition play at its most effective. A Crawley move broke down on the right, with centre back Will Wright having been invited to venture into Wrexham territory only to be caught in possession, leaving the visitors open with too many players stranded ahead of the ball.
Often this season I’ve felt we’ve failed to take advantage of opportunities to break, with players taking too many touches of the ball in order to make sure they weren’t responsible for the attack breaking down. There were no such inhibitions this time, though, as we scythed through the middle of the pitch. Lee helped the ball on first time, Barnett drove at his man before laying the ball off to the ubiquitous, magnificent Andy Cannon, whose first time cross gave Paul Mullin a tap-in.
Lindsey tried to alter things and made his 5 substitutions quite early in the second half, a sure sign his initial plan had failed. Parkinson found solutions to anything he threw at him. It was a glorious triumph for the manager.
Football is wonderfully fickle, though. A wonderful showing is no guarantee of a repetition. If we’re not able to replicate that performance on Saturday, it could all be for nothing.
DragonHeart 