SHAUN HARVEY feels that altering Wrexham’s pre-season calendar, both at home and in North America, provided the groundwork for the club’s strong start to the League One season.

Phil Parkinson’s back-to-back promotion champions have started the ground running on the club’s return to the third division for the first time in 19 years, sitting second with 20 points from their first ten games.

The Reds have acclimated well to life at the highest level, and director Harvey believes that getting the pre-season schedule correct has made a significant impact.

Wrexham went on a four-game tour of America in preparation for the 2023-24 League Two season, but returned only a week before the first game, a 5-3 home defeat to MK Dons, and the poor start continued.

This summer, Wrexham returned from a three-match North American tour with more time to prepare for the first league game, as well as a pre-season friendly against Fleetwood Town at home.

Harvey believes the game against the Cod Army was critical for the players to get the journey over the water out of their system, and that is supported by the Reds’ strong start when competitive football began.

“We learnt the lessons of the first USA tour which was a massive success in its our right but we all recognised that you can do things better,” Harvey told the crowd.

“We struck the proper balance between the benefits of traveling to North America to further the club’s commercial development and the requirement to guarantee that we prepared and were ready for the start of the season.

“Where we are today demonstrates that things were better.

“The main difference in pre-season was the intention to play a domestic friendly at The Racecourse before the season began.

“In the Fleetwood fixture, you could see an element of getting rustiness and travel out of the system, and to do that in a pre-season friendly rather than the first league game of the season, I think that has helped shape those first 10 games of the season in a big way.”

Harvey commended Parkinson, his staff, and the players for swiftly adjusting to life in a higher league, and he believes that being able to practice at Colliers Park on a daily basis has been extremely useful.

“We have now played 10 games which most people take as the minimum that you should have played before you start drawing any kind of idea as to what the future might hold, and we find ourselves sitting in second place in the league with six wins and only two defeats,” observed Harvey.

“You would definitely accept that.

“When you look at how we got here, it is certainly due to the players because they are the ones that bring the results, and Phil and his coaching team for putting them in a position.

“The fact we have been able to use Colliers Park on a regular basis for pre-season training whilst we have been in this country has also had a positive impact, but the work was done by everybody during pre-season.”

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