Dave’s Ramblings – Wrexham
On our way to Welsh Wales today we decided to pop along to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. However, we couldn’t get in to the village as the road sign was that big it blocked the road off. Such is life.
They also have a football team. Can you imagine the battering that the bloke starting off the, “give me an L…” chant would get?!
Anyway, I transgress. The first of two foreign trips this week, and all I can say is that I hope the duty free is better in Paris.
The Welsh name for Wrexham is “Wrecsam.” This is basically the same word, just with the spelling nudged slightly to the left. I’m beginning to suspect Welsh isn’t a different language, it’s just English after a few pints.
The FA Cup is realistically our best, if not only, chance of silverware this season. So Liam obviously made nine changes from the Villa game.
Their manager probably walked into the dressing room, held up the team sheet and said: “Good news lads… they don’t rate you. Let’s go out there and show them just what you are capable of doing.”
Let’s make no bones about it. Tonight we were ridiculously lucky. They could have been three goals up before we even remembered which direction we were attacking.
And when they went down to ten men, we very sportingly tried our best to still look like the second-best side.
I have no idea why they had VAR there, that’s not exactly normal for a Championship side. But I’m glad they did… because it certainly worked in our favour.
They went one up after taking advantage of the ridiculous high line we’ve decided to start using. I’ve no idea why we do it, especially when most of our possession in our own half consists of passing sideways… or backwards… or sideways again.
It took us 40 minutes to register our first attempt on goal. Fortunately, that attempt resulted in an equaliser, although we did need a little help. Garnacho’s effort was cleared off the line but bounced off the Wrexham keepers back and into the net.
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
The second half turned into a proper end-to-end cup tie, which was refreshing after the first 45 minutes where we specialised mainly in not playing football very well or at all.
Sadly, our improvement didn’t stop them taking the lead again. On 78 minutes, a shot from outside the box was cleverly flicked into the net, sending Sanchez the wrong way… which, to be fair, wasn’t especially difficult on the night.
Their joy lasted just four minutes though as Josh drilled a powerful shot inside the near post to level things up again.
Pedro Neto then smashed a powerful effort against the bar shortly after, easily the closest he’d come to doing something useful all night.
The turning point came in the 93rd minute when VAR sprang into action. After the referee had missed a shocking tackle, he was called to do the walk of shame to the monitor. He then, rightfully, sent off one of their players for a high and dangerous tackle on Garnacho.
It turns out VAR wasn’t just there for decoration after all.
In extra time, Wrexham finally began to tire and had to deal with a number of attacks. Eventually Garnacho, completely unmarked at the back post, hit home a lovely clipped cross from Dario Essugo.
The only problem was nobody seemed to realise it had gone in.
Either that or our players simply couldn’t be bothered to celebrate. Perhaps they were just confused. After all, it was the first time all night we’d actually been ahead, and no one appeared entirely sure what the correct procedure was.
Wrexham thought they’d grabbed a dramatic equaliser in the 114th minute, but VAR ruled it out for offside.
From where I stood it looked like the ball was going in, but one of their players decided to head it in. Either to make sure… or because he fancied claiming the goal for himself.
Sadly for him, that helpful header turned a perfectly good goal into a very offside one.
Despite being down to ten men Wrexham still caused us plenty of problems, which was slightly worrying given they were supposed to be the exhausted team.
Thankfully, goal machine Joao Pedro, added some late shine to the scoreline by breaking away and finishing past a Wrexham defence that finally looked like it had collectively run out of batteries.
Game over… and somehow we’d managed to come away with a win.
I’m still not entirely sure how that happened, but I suspect luck, VAR and mild panic were all involved.
My takeaways…
I completely understand that with the PSG game on Wednesday, Liam decided to give a few players a rest. Fair enough. Rotation is part of modern football. My only slight concern is that there’s a small difference between “a few” and “basically the entire starting XI plus the kit man.”
The two players who actually started against Villa, (Hato and Garnacho) aren’t even regular starters themselves. At that point it wasn’t rotation, it was more like Liam accidentally pressed the randomise squad button on Football Manager.
Honestly, it felt a bit disrespectful to Wrexham, the FA Cup, and especially the fans who travelled all that way expecting to see a team that at least knew each other.
Yes, we won. Technically. But we also very nearly didn’t, which made the whole experience feel less like a professional football match and more like one of those chaotic pre-season friendlies where nobody knows who’s playing where.
And anyone claiming we deserved this result must have been watching a completely different game, possibly from a different galaxy, or at the very least a different channel.
This is where the eternal battle between money and trophies comes in. Fans want silverware. Owners want hard cash. And unfortunately, there’s more money in a decent run in the Champions League than there is in actually winning the FA Cup.
But surely a football club should be about more than just accounting spreadsheets. If it isn’t, we might as well replace the manager with an Excel formula and let the finance department pick the starting XI.
I really do hope Liam takes something from this game. Ideally the lesson being: focus on the match you’re actually playing, not the glamorous one that might happen later. Football has a funny habit of punishing teams who start planning for Wednesday while it’s still Saturday.
Also, maybe don’t disrespect your opponent. That sort of thing tends to come back and bite you… usually in the 89th minute when a bloke called Tim from Wrexham suddenly turns into prime Messi.
Do I think this will be a lesson learned? Sadly, no. Because for that to happen we would also have had to learn that our slow, hypnotic back-and-sideways passing achieves roughly the same level of excitement as watching paint dry… in slow motion… during a power cut.
And then there are the death-wish passes from the keeper. You know the ones, where he casually rolls the ball to a defender who’s being marked by three attackers and looks as surprised as the rest of us when chaos immediately unfolds.
If we play anything close to how we did in this game on Wednesday, we won’t need a second leg. In fact, UEFA might as well just end the tie at half-time, shake hands, and escort us politely back to the airport before the scoreboard files a restraining order.
Still, we won. Our name is in the draw for the quarter finals, and Wrexham wasn’t a bad place at all.
Onwards and upwards. UTC 💙
Dave M
