The star striker for the Red Dragons is back from injury, and his teammates have given him a lot of assistance in scoring goals.
The 2-0 triumph that Wrexham secured on Saturday away at Notts County felt like a turning point in their season. It’s understandable why Phil Parkinson declared following the game that it was one of his best days ever as a manager.
Supported by a boisterous, sold-out away end, his team earned a crucial three points against one of their main League Two promotion rivals, who they participated in a historic National League title race with the previous season.
Not only Parkinson had fun, but so did others. Paul Mullin, the striker, was also ecstatic, calling the trip the “perfect away day”. Mullin made a significant impact at Meadow Lane, setting up Ollie Palmer’s goal in the 76th minute to secure Wrexham’s victory after Elliot Lee had opened the scoring moments earlier.
Mullin’s campaign is back on track after a very challenging start to the season that required his attacking teammates to step up to the plate. This was his fourth goal contribution in as many games.
Mullin led Wrexham to victory.
Mullin was the most important player on the team when Wrexham ran away with the National League championship. The striker, who was born in Liverpool, finished with an incredible 46 goals across all competitions. Ollie Palmer, the team’s closest contender for the Golden Boot, came in last with 16. It wasn’t just how many goals there were that was astounding. In terms of his link-up play, pressing, and inventiveness, Mullin also contributed a great deal more, as former teammate Jake Hyde recently noted.
“He’d drop short, create chances and I thought ‘this lad is a proper player’,” Hyde said. “After that, he demonstrated his skill in front of goal. I seem to have thought, “I’m going to like playing with this lad because he’s got that creative side,” when he first entered. He exceeded my expectations in quality.”
To put it another way, he was Wrexham’s undeniable leader and was expected to stay in this crucial position when the team made its eagerly anticipated return to the Football League.
A catastrophe in the US
But first, Mullin and company had to make their way through a preseason tour of the United States. For the team, which consisted mostly of lower-league plodders for whom a training camp in Cornwall would have been considered exotic, it was an experience of a lifetime.
Wrexham made the most of their trip to the United States, playing against some of the greatest teams in the world and enjoying the praise of their devoted American supporters.
Wrexham also appeared to miss him.
Parkinson’s charges took some time to get used to losing their best player, as one might expect. They lost to MK Dons 5-3 on the first day of play, an unexpected result that may have more to do with the team’s subpar defence than its lack of offensive punch. Wrexham did, however, only manage three goals that day despite having twelve shots from inside the box. If Mullin had been leading the Red Dragons’ offensive, they could have converted a few more of these opportunities, right?
The next week against AFC Wimbledon, in Carabao Cup matches against Bradford City and Wigan Athletic, and in a 1-1 draw with Barrow, there was also a lack of a clinical edge. Mullin was injured for six league games, but Wrexham only managed nine points from those games, which tells you everything about the impact of his absence.
Mullin came back, but Lee was superior to him.
Early in September, Mullin returned to action against Doncaster Rovers, to thunderous cheers from the Racecourse supporters. Mullin had entered as a second-half substitute in a 2-1 victory. But Mullin failed to find the scoresheet that afternoon, and in his next two appearances against high-flying Stockport County and Grimsby Town, he also failed to make the net bulge.
Luckily for Wrexham, Elliot Lee, a new hero, appeared. While Mullin was out, Lee took up the slack in scoring goals, scoring five goals while his teammate was out. And just as Mullin was getting back up to speed, he performed brilliantly once more. In the Doncaster match, he scored the game’s winning goal in the 88th minute and then added an assist as Parkinson’s team defeated Grimsby 3-0.
Lee, who plays an attacking midfield role, is highly praised by both his manager and the supporters for his excellent form, which has kept Wrexham in the top three.
“He’s a little magician, Elliot,” Parkinson remarked following his heroics against Doncaster. “You can see that he has genuine magic in his boots on a regular basis. Not many players have as many goals as Elliott, who has primarily played for us from a deeper position, but you always have a feeling that something exciting is going to happen when he enters and exits the box.”
The star man of Wrexham gets back on track
But Mullin was never a player to stay in the background for very long. He returned to the team to an underwhelming reception, but he quickly proved his worth against Crewe Alexandra with a brace of goals, the first of which was an admirably-improvised bicycle kick. The star of “Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” Rob McElhenney, is a co-owner. He posted on X, saying, “Heeeeeeeeee’s baaaaaack!” Since then, Mullin has been given the captain’s armband while Ben Tozer is out with an injury, and in the last few weeks, he has benefited greatly from the extra duty.
In his team’s last four games, the striker has either scored or assisted, bringing his goal total to four and helping his team’s unbeaten streak to seven games. Although he’s still six spots behind Lee at the top of the charts, it’s impressive growth for a player who acknowledged that he was afraid for his life following his horrifying injury.
Even lesser-known figures contributing
This season, Wrexham has also profited from an up-front supporting group of lesser-known players in addition to Lee and Mullin. Palmer has always been the supporting player to his strike partner, providing assists rather than scoring goals on his own, but he relished his opportunity to shine during the Notts County match. It was only fitting that Mullin was the architect, seizing an unlucky mishap and setting Palmer free to fire an unstoppable volley past Sam Slocombe.
Palmer is not the only one making contributions. Although the former Premier League star has not taken the division by storm, Steven Fletcher’s arrival on a free transfer back in September came as a bit of a shock. Nevertheless, he has made some helpful contributions,
More recently, he scored in the 88th minute to help his team defeat Salford City and earn all three points. Parkinson was extremely pleased with his performance. “He’s a class player, he’s come in, obviously missed pre-season and then he’s had a problem with his knee, had some fluid drained off,” Parkinson said. He hasn’t trained as much as he would have liked over the past ten or so days, but he still proved today that he is a first-class player.”
Regretfully, Fletcher’s knee injury necessitates surgery, and the Scotland international is unlikely to play again until 2024, according to confirmation on Wednesday.
Now he’s back, can anyone stop Wrexham’s?
Wrexham appears to be sharing the goals much more this season than they did in their promotion-winning 2022–2023 campaign. This is a good thing because the Red Dragons, who continue to appear far from determined at the back, will need as many threats in the box as they can muster. Amazingly, only six League Two teams have allowed more goals than Wrexham this season, even though they are comfortably positioned in third place.
Although those don’t seem like the numbers of a team that wins promotions, they could still finish in the top three and still have some flexibility at the back with three automatic routes into League One up for grabs.
However, only while Mullin
