Defender Ben Tozer insists Wrexham need to be more ruthless as they look to build on Saturday’s gritty win at home to Woking.
The Red Dragons travel to Grimsby Town on Tuesday night, looking to extend their unbeaten start to the 2021/22 season.
And the big centre-back, one of ten new signings in the summer, hailed Wrexham’s support and the team’s character after a crowd of 8,242 watched the win at the Racecourse.
Reflecting on the Woking win, he said: “To get more than 8,000 at this level is unreal and it was great to have them back behind the goal in the WREXRENT stand as well.
“For us players playing in front of them every game makes it even more enjoyable and something that we all look forward to.
“I don’t think we were quite as ruthless as we could have been in front of goal, but it was really pleasing to see Jordan get on the scoresheet.
“The move was started with the ball from Aaron Hayden to Paul Mullin, so it was great to see one of our centre halves stepping in to set up the goal.
“Hopefully later in the season we’re taking the chances we’re getting and punishing teams because in some games we might not have that many to get us over the line.
“There’s fine moments in games and we just need to show that ruthlessness more because they’ll be times this season where on another day, they could have made us pay for the chances we missed.”
Saturday’s match saw Wrexham hang on with ten men to earn all three points, after Davies went off injured and replacement David Jones was sent off.
But Tozer – who knows all about building a promotion-winning side after his League Two success at Cheltenham Town last season – says the test of character will pay dividends in the long run.
“The way we performed against Southend and again against Woking showed real character,” he added.
“We are going to get hit across the season like we did against Southend, and it took us going 2-0 down before we reacted.
“It’s learning to adapt to these scenarios in games as a team, having that steely determination to grind results out and we did just that.
“I love moments like this where it’s the last 15 minutes and we’re slightly on the backfoot and us as defenders can roll our shoulders back and make sure we do our job to get the three points.”
But, similarly to manager Phil Parkinson in his post-match interview, Tozer was quick to single out Rob Lainton for praise following his last-minute injury-time save to deny Jordan Maguire-Drew.
The goalkeeper spread himself to stop the former Wrexham loanee snatching a point in injury time, and Tozer hailed the goalkeeper’s concentration levels after a second clean sheet of the season.
“It was a superb save from Rob and to have such high concentration levels to pull that off in a game where he’s not had much to do was excellent,” he said.
“This win was a massive three points because we made mistakes today and we weren’t punished for it.”
The game against Grimsby, at Blundell Park, sees Tozer and his Wrexham team-mates take on the man he replaced in the backline – ex-Wrexham captain Shaun Pearson.
The match, on Tuesday September 14, kicks off at 7.45pm and you can read our full match preview here.