Wrexham’s automatic promotion hopes suffered a setback as they were on the wrong end of a Leyton Orient comeback, with the Londoners coming from behind to triumph 2-1 at the STōK Cae Ras on Tuesday.
Ollie Rathbone gave the Welsh club a deserved lead but goals from Charlie Kelman and Jamie Donley either side of half-time were enough to secure three points for the Orient, who lost Darren Pratley to a late red card.
Here, The Athletic picks out the main talking points from a disappointing night for Wrexham.
The League One rollercoaster throws up another twist
A gap to second-placed Wycombe Wanderers that stood at six points for Wrexham on the final day of January had shrunk to just two by last weekend — but now stands at five.
Welcome to the crazy and unpredictable world that is this season’s League One promotion race, where the only certainty seems to be that big-spending Birmingham City will be going up as champions.
Each week brings at least one result that goes massively against the formbook to ensure this is a division where nothing can be taken for granted. Leyton Orient perhaps epitomise this best.
Sitting in the relegation places as December dawned, Richie Wellens’ side are now sixth in the table and looking to push on even further after winning 12 of their last 15 outings. As Tuesday night showed, they will take some stopping thanks to a pressing game that gave Wrexham centre-halves Max Cleworth and Lewis Brunt arguably their toughest nights of the campaign.
Phil Parkinson’s side have lost three of their last six games in League One (Pete Norton/Getty Images)
Wrexham’s own recent form is rather patchy compared to Orient, their eight games since the turn of the year having yielded three victories and three defeats. Nevertheless, Phil Parkinson insists that the promotion picture can change very quickly in a competition where the fixtures continue to come thick and fast, starting with his side’s trip to Mansfield Town on Sunday.
“This division is as strong as it’s ever been,” he says. “That’s not just me saying that. Every manager I speak to talks about the strength of the division. Teams down the bottom have improved while others, like Orient, have made good signings.
“There’s lots of football still to play and we have a chance to quickly put right what we didn’t do well tonight.”
Rathbone’s growing influence in front of goal
Finding a chink of light amid the gloom of a desperately disappointing night for Wrexham was not easy. But if such a thing existed, then it came via the continued good form of Rathbone.
Not only did the 28-year-old give Wrexham a 20th-minute lead through a perfectly-timed run from the edge of the area to meet James McClean’s corner after leaving Sonny Perkins trailing, but he also led the Orient defence a merry dance throughout the first half — never more so than when executing a pirouette-style turn to leave several in sky blue horribly wrong-footed before spreading the play to Ryan Barnett.
Even as Wrexham totally lost their way after half-time, Rathbone never hid as he tried in vain to get things going.
His exquisite pass inside the full-back to release Ryan Longman was probably the home side’s best moment of a sorry 45 minutes, while it was no surprise that the tireless midfielder was on hand to help out Mark Howard as the veteran goalkeeper frantically raced back into his own half after going up for a stoppage-time corner.
A look at maps of his touches, shots and goals in the 10n games that followed the 1-1 draw at Bristol Rovers just before Christmas shows just how much energy he brings to the team.
Employed primarily on the left side of a midfield trio, Rathbone has a tendency to pop up all over the pitch. This includes some efforts on goal from the right hand side of the field, plus that assist for Matty James at Crawley when he was near the goal-line.
Rathbone’s five goals means he’s already guaranteed his most profitable season in front of goal in the league, his previous best being the four times he netted for Rotherham United two seasons ago as well as for Rochdale in 2018-19.
“Goals were something I wanted to add to my game” says the former Manchester United junior, who also has three assists to his name. “I knew I had it in me, so it’s great to be contributing goals and assists, and helping the team.
“I have probably put a bit more emphasis on that side of my game, working hard on it in training. By doing well in training, my confidence has been up. The competition for places has also helped; as in all the other midfielders are chipping in with goals.”
Ollie Rathbone has scored five goals so far this season (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
It’s a measure of how influential a figure Rathbone has become after initially having to wait for his chance that Parkinson, when asked what went wrong in the second half against Orient, bemoaned the lack of service afforded to the midfielder by his team-mates.
“We didn’t get Ollie on the ball as much as we would have liked,” he says. “He relies on people giving him the ball in that pocket and then he drives at the opposition. The times we got him on the ball in the second half were few and far between.”
Rathbone’s hard work on the training pitch has certainly paid off, judging by an expected goals (xG) per shot of 0.09 this season, a metric that can help to estimate the average quality of chances falling his way.
That figure is way up from the 0.05 the midfielder posted in his final two seasons at Rotherham, boosted by the fact that his average shot distance has fallen by 5.5 yards from last season.
He has also taken 63 per cent of his shots from inside the penalty area in a Wrexham shirt, as opposed to 31 per cent last season in the Championship.
Who’d be a football manager?
Just four days after the satisfaction of chalking up back-to-back away wins in the league for the first time all season, Wrexham’s one-time imperious home form took another dent as a third game at the STōK Cae Ras passed without maximum points being claimed.
Worse still, Wrexham have now lost two league games on home soil in a row for the first time since Parkinson took charge during the summer of 2021.
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, even for someone with more than 1,000 games in the dugout to his name.
Other contributor: Thom Harris
GO DEEPER
Wrexham’s away form analysed and why an improvement will likely be needed to secure promotion
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
