Wrexham have dropped 20 points from winning positions this season. It needs to stop – The Athletic
As the fourth official Samuel Allison prepared to lift his board and indicate there would be five minutes of stoppage time, Wrexham stood on the cusp of the play-offs.
Deservedly ahead through Lewis O’Brien’s second-half goal and with the final whistle having blown at the other eight Championship fixtures, the Welsh club were siting seventh in the live league table.
Only goal difference separated Preston North End in sixth from Phil Parkinson’s Wrexham, who looked as comfortable as any side can be when holding a one-goal lead against a Leicester City side that appeared to have long since run out of ideas.
Then, though, came the return of Wrexham’s Achilles heel, as Jannik Vestergaard became the latest player to take advantage of the team’s vulnerability when leading games to net a dramatic equaliser.
His goal means Wrexham have now dropped a colossal 20 points from winning positions, three more than anyone else in the division.
To underline just how costly this trait has been, the Welsh club would be sitting second in the table if they had dropped only half this total, as opposed to the ninth place they currently occupy.
“A real sucker-punch,” says Liberato Cacace, the Wrexham left wing-back. “But we should be switched on when 1-0 up in the dying seconds of the game. You have to be switched on for 95 minutes, especially against a good side like Leicester.
“They can hurt you and they did that. We have to learn from these. The boys need to pick themselves up and go again Saturday. We were quite stunned, to be fair. That’s also the vibe I got from the rest of the stadium.”
In a game played in difficult conditions, as driving wind and rain battered the SToK Cae Ras, the first half proved to be something of a non-event. Bobby De Cordova-Reid brought a brave save from Arthur Okonkwo just before the break, but that was about it in terms of genuine goalmouth action, as the below expected goals (xG) step chart shows.
Wrexham then stepped things up after the break, the hosts using the wind at their backs intelligently to push Leicester deeper and deeper.
Their reward came when O’Brien finished from close range after goalkeeper Jakub Stolarczyk had only been able to parry Cacace’s deflected cross into the path of the midfielder.
Those 1,284 travelling Leicester fans expecting an immediate response were left disappointed, certainly at first, with 26 minutes passing without so much as one effort on the Wrexham goal.
This meant, as the fourth official took instructions from referee Matt Donohue as to how much stoppage time was to be played, back-to-back away defeats for Marti Cifuentes’ side looked on the cards.
Instead, Wrexham suffered a familiar sense of frustration as two points were dropped, and it left Parkinson frustrated, if philosophical, at the final whistle.
“The silence at the end suggested everyone knew we deserved the three points,” he says. “But, sometimes, you don’t get what you deserve.”
That sentiment can probably be applied to Wrexham’s season. This trait of being unable to see out games started on the opening day at Southampton, when a 1-0 lead heading into stoppage time somehow morphed into a 2-1 loss by the time the final whistle blew.
Sheffield Wednesday’s fightback from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 in the third fixture of the season meant five points had been squandered in the opening weeks, putting Wrexham top of this particular table.
It’s an unwanted position they’ve maintained ever since, after dropping further points in draws against Derby County, Birmingham City, Middlesbrough, Preston North End, Watford, and now Leicester.
The 2-1 defeat at Swansea City just before Christmas completes this sorry tale of 20 dropped points.
Dropped Points From A Winning Position
Dropped PointsLeague Position
Wrexham
20
9th
Norwich City
17
20th
Derby County
16
10th
Blackburn Rovers
16
21st
Sheffield Wednesday
16
24th
Southampton
15
16th
Leicester City
14
14th
Sheffield United
14
17th
West Bromwich Albion
12
19th
Oxford United
12
23rd
A look at Wrexham’s fellow sinners in the above table for dropped points underlines the damage such a trait is causing, with most of them in the lower reaches of the overall Championship table. But why is it still happening?
There’s no doubt Wrexham have improved defensively since those first few weeks back at this level. Sixteen goals were shipped in the opening 10 games, including 10 in the first five. Hull City also found Okonkwo’s net three times in a Carabao Cup first-round fixture, which was eventually settled on penalties.
Contrast that to the 19 goals conceded in 18 league games since, plus six clean sheets, as opposed to the solitary shutout by Danny Ward at Millwall during the first two months of 2025-26.
Even allowing for this improvement, Wrexham have still faced the fourth-highest tally of shots in the division (408, 15 behind Sheffield Wednesday in top spot) and had to make 130 blocks (third behind Charlton Athletic on 131 and Hull City 139).
The combined tally of saves by Okonkwo and Ward is 91, beaten only by Sheffield Wednesday (109).
Expected goals against (xGA) is the fifth highest in the division at 39.7, a legacy perhaps of those early weeks when Wrexham’s back line was prised open far too easily and average xGA was running at more than 2.0 per game.
But it’s still too high and perhaps helps explain why teams are pegging Parkinson’s side back.
Wrexham are still in a great position, but if the play-offs are to be a realistic target, this failure to close out games cannot continue.
“We were really comfortable in the game,” adds Parkinson. “You take the moment at the end out of it, that was a really gritty, hard-working performance. But the gloss is taken off it because we haven’t dealt with one ball in the box.
“It held up in the wind and was a swirly free kick. But, if we head that clear, we win the game. It was almost a slow-motion moment. So, yes, we are frustrated because we hadn’t been troubled all night.”
