Wrexham away in a battle between sixth and seventh in the current Championship standings, with Saints having a game in hand but Wrexham have a one point of advantage. Win this and they will be four points ahead of us, thus negating the game in hand, so that will clearly be their target. Whilst a draw would not be the worst result in the world for us, we will certainly be going out there with the expectation of winning, particularly after the Arsenal game. One thing against us is that Wrexham have had an extra day to recover from their Friday night game away at West Brom, where they quickly went 2-0 down, but fought back in the second half to get a decent point and it’s that point which has put them above us in the table for now.

Phil Parkinson is a former Saints trainee who was in the youth teams around the same time as Matt Le Tissier, and he has achieved promotions in straight seasons from the National League, through League 2, League 1 and is now challenging at the top end of the Championship. Whatever your resources and whatever your situation, that takes some doing and is an incredibly impressive achievement of course. With football being the way it is, increased profile brings increased expectations and when they initially struggled to adapt to the Championship, unbelievably, there were people looking at him as being the reason. It’s a great football story that once settled, Wrexham have been mid-table or above since before Christmas and the fact that they are even in the conversation for the playoffs is a testament to Parkinson’s ability as a manager.

I’ve got this far without mentioning the Hollywood Circus, the documentary, the media love-in and any of that bullshit. On the one hand, when you compare Wrexham‘s Hollywood owners with other owners around the game, then how can you have a problem with it – not exactly the sovereign state of some Middle Eastern country is it? The problem is of course one of perception and that perception is fed by the media who suck up and form any big name, be it a big name from football endeavours or Hollywood movie stars.

With Hollywood comes branding however and what used to be universally known as the Racecourse Ground is now almost always referred to as the Stok Cae Ras, which is a sponsor plus the Welsh language version of the ground name it was previously referred to as. Deadpool and the other guy are very keen to tap into their Welsh identity as a club though Wrexham has one of the lowest concentration of Welsh speakers in the country (12.2% in 2001) so I imaging that a lot of their fans had no idea what Y Cae Ras was either. The Welsh drive also extends to the playing staff where they paid relatively decent money in wages and/or fees for some Welsh players like Nathan Broadhead and Kieffer Moore. Moore in particular will be living rent free in the heads of Saints players after the tough time he gave everybody on the opening day of the season at St Mary’s, but luckily, the player who had the most nightmares as a result of the big Welshman, was Ronnie Edwards who is no longer with us. Moore played the last half an hour against West Brom on Friday having just had a long injury break that was bad enough to keep him out of Wales unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the World Cup via the playoffs. It will be somewhat surprising if at 33, he has significantly recovered from Friday to start this game.

Saints of course, ride in on the crest of an Arsenal shaped wave, only marginally dented by being paired with Manchester City and the semi-final. That’s for another day however, and today will be about carrying that momentum forward and bringing the energy again, which is going to be a key component of the rest of the season bearing in mind that we are now going mid week/weekend/midweek/weekend from now until the end of the regular season. It will be a real test of that old cliché that players always come out with about preferring playing as opposed to training.

I would expect that to be a few changes for tonight with Shea Charles, Cyle Larin, Kuryu Matsuki and Flynn Downes the most likely to come in. Today gives Tonda another tactical challenge because Wrexham play a kind of 3-4-2-1 formation. Let’s face it, we should know how to get at that system having seen other teams do it to us in the earlier part of the season.

Wrexham are going to come flying at us in this one as it’s massive for them being at home and with games running out. We have to be ready for that, match it and them impose our game on them. Match their effort and we certainly have enough to win this game. Don’t match it and it’ll be a game like West Brom a few weeks ago.