Brian: A Step In The Right Direction
WHILE those Wrexham fans at the Racecourse today will have been well satisfied with what they saw from their new look team, manager Brian Little was far from getting carried away, despite a worthy 1-0 victory over their Championship opponents.
"It was good to get a step in the right direction and from a fitness point of view I'm pleased," he said following this win against Wolves.
"Obviously people will be more pleased about certain things than I am, as my mentality is that it's a pre-season training session in which we did okay.
"Hopefully we are going to develop a team with a little bit more ability that we have had previously.
"I think a few things showed through today. So I'm reasonably pleased, because I know if I was standing here talking to you after a defeat, then I would still be saying the same things.
"It's not about the result; it's about everybody getting to know each other. We have tried a couple of different things today and with another practice game on Tuesday, will try a few other things before another friendly similar to this next Saturday.
"Once we have analysed this, then we will try one or two things on Tuesday and Saturday.
"There are a lot of things today that people might read too much into and that's one of the dangers of putting public games on, as there are those who might be looking a lot further ahead than I am.
"Fine, I appreciate that and don't disagree with that, as I was quite pleased with some of the things we did. I just maintain there are other issues that we are looking at, trying different combinations in different areas, and it's those sorts of things which give us food for thought.
"How we play is probably more important to other people than me - at this moment.
"We are looking at trying people in different positions and we have another three or four games to go before we have what we think is the starting line-up.
"Having said that, I am delighted at how we played this afternoon, but I'm still looking at trying to bring in a new face if we could.
"We are though at a point where we know that player has to be someone who will go into the team, rather than into the squad. So that is probably why the last week slowed down a little bit.
"There are players out there who are available, but on each of the occasions the ones we felt we were close to, would have been squad players rather than an automatic choice.
"At the moment we want to make it a better team, rather than a better squad."
Tom Kearney goes down under a challenge from Richard Stearman
The boss then turned his attention to the players who wore the Wrexham shirt for the first time this afternoon.
"If we go through the new lads, then Tom in the middle of park was very solid on the ball, kept it in tight areas, while we have always thought that Kyle would be a good player," he said.
"Up front big Jeff gives us an alternative, he's big, strong and fairly mobile, while Simon is bright, sharp and lively. We were very pleased with Nat and he can play in several positions and that is something which we will try over the next week.
"Obviously we haven't seen much of Shaun yet, but that will come.
"We want to keep things low key though and make sure we do the right things at the right time. This is a good day for us and I'm sure a little message will go around fairly quickly, but I would say again that it's very early - even if the signs for us were encouraging.
"We also felt that on Wednesday, even though we didn't get the result we have got here, we felt exactly the same after facing Shrewsbury.
"The things we tried today were a step in the right direction and took us on that little bit further."
