Brian Little’s first victory as Wrexham manager lifted us out of the relegation zone ensuring that Wrexham fans can breathe a sigh of relief, verging on joy.

We’re unbeaten in the league over the last four games, and in three of those games we’ve kept clean sheets. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s our best form all season.

After travelling to Rochdale on Saturday we travelled just a bit further to Dale’s local rivals Bury for this midweek game. Young Neil Taylor was rested as Valentine came back into the side but Little was also forced to make two other changes as a result of a virus sweeping through the squad. Out went Done and Aiston, in came Garrett and Eifion Williams.

Wrexham started the game positively well on top. Our new manager seems to have conjured similar levels of commitment from the players that we saw at the back end of last season. We looked like winning every ball and attacked well. Bury seemed poor, looking similar to Wrexham prior to Little’s arrival.

After just half an hour we opened the scoring through Eifion Williams. Garrett had hit the ball long and Bury’s goalkeeper Jim Provett totally misjudged it while Eifion rounded him to head us into the lead. It was Eifion’s first goal for us since pre-season which is ironic given his prolific reputation for goal-scoring throughout his career. However there are reasons for the drought but now it has ended Eifion and Wrexham fans will hope that there’s many more to come.

Unfortunately Eifion appeared to injure himself in celebrating the goal and was immediately replaced by Marc Williams. Just our luck, but we kept going as the stronger side until half-time with Bury offering very little. The Shakers managed to up their game a little at the beginning of the second period.

There was a slight scare when Anthony Williams didn’t come to collect a ball that should have been his, but the situation was rescued with Steve Evans cutting out Andy Bishop’s shot. From the resulting corner Ben Futcher’s header hit the side netting but for a brief second it seemed as if the ball had gone in! Once again our defence were untroubled for most of the game.

Marc Williams had our best chance of the second half with a header from less than six yards being saved by Provett. We generally soaked up any Bury pressure before breaking forward as the game wore on. To help with this Josh Johnson was introduced in place of Proctor and the clock ran down.

When the final whistle went the 500+ Wrexham fans that had travelled to Bury and really got behind the side all night could really celebrate this hard earned victory. Likewise on the Wrexham bench Brian Little, Brian Carey, and Mel Pejic appeared to be celebrating just as much!

We’ve had to wait for what seems like an age for this victory so we are well entitled to celebrate. We can’t get too carried away but an away victory and a clean sheet for anyone is a good result.

Since Little’s arrived the performances and results have improved markedly and now moved us up to 20th in the table.

We’d have taken that finish at the end of the season just a few weeks ago. Now you sense that many fans are setting their ambitions for the season a little bit higher, but there’s a long way to go yet… 

 

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