“Heaven knows I’m miserable now”
We’re all much happier when January is over.
That cough you’ve had on-and-off since Christmas is finally easing up. Michael Bublé is completely off the airwaves having entered his deepest state of hibernation. And the pressure to adhere to NHS-recommended drink and diet guidelines doesn’t seem quite as intense anymore.
It’s at this point in the year when everything starts to feel normal again.
Manchester knew the score: Restaurants, pubs and arenas were at sardine levels in The Rainy City on Saturday as locals rushed out to squander that precious first paycheque of 2024 on booze, food and dancing.
It felt like the perfect place to be. Until the football kicked off.
Earlier that afternoon, crowds milling around the AO Arena had been carrying those little score paddles to hold aloft during a Strictly Come Dancing show. We could have borrowed a few marked “1” to show how we rated Wrexham’s performance at the match taking place up the road, but Reds fans probably would have used them to wallop the linesman instead - who performed impressions of The Laughing Policeman when he made calls against us.
It wasn’t really that smug official’s fault, though. We only had ourselves to blame.
Every single one of our boys had a day to forget at Salford, and not even the coveted trio of Arthur from Arsenal, Elliot Twinkle Toes and Pele Mullin were safe from the grumbling critiques of the Red faithful during and after the game.
Parky was more cautious.
“I’m not going to pick out individual performances, we’re all in this as a team,” he growled in his post-match interview, as haunting memories of his goalkeeper flapping like a headless pigeon in the wind flashed across his tired eyes.
It was the right call to be coy. Troy Deeney tried to take Forest Green Rovers off the bottom of League Two by lambasting his squad members and it did not have the inspiring Any Given Sunday effect he was hoping for. But only Salford have a worse home record than FGR - so behind the scenes, Parky will be acting more Hyde than Jekyll.
This was a bad defeat. Despite pinching their top player, we made Mini Man Utd look like Fergie’s treble-winning immortals, and it was probably our worst attempt at playing football since we left our boots on the bus in Stockport. Every time we visit Greater Manchester these days, we seem to fare about as well as a Scouser who’s overheard in Ordsall saying “Sorry, but I don’t really rate The Smiths”.
But it isn’t just the M60 that’s a problem. This latest loss is part of a bigger pattern: Away performances. We’re a different team on the road, and our lads seem to ache for the comforting glow of Y Cae Ras floodlights from the moment they pass the signs reading “WELCOME TO ENGLAND”. Who wouldn’t, I suppose?
We’ll need to make sure The Racecourse remains a fortress until Parky smuggles a mountain of Extra-Strength American Travel Sickness Tablets into Wrexham via our international fans from Kentucky, Maine and Utah… or until he finds a new tactical approach away from home that does the job.
It’s February, and everything else is back to normal now. So, if Wrexham could follow suit and become unbeatable again, that would be cracking.
It’s not a crisis when you’re one point off promotion. But rightly or wrongly, this Bradford home tie suddenly feels a bit bigger than it did a couple of weeks ago...