Wrexham Goalkeeper Situation

Wrexham only have the young Chris Maxwell on their books at present and even though people were raving about him at the end of last season when he played a few games and saying he is one for the future, I couldn`t disagree more. He is a decent shot stopper but when he comes for the crosses he just is not tall enough and will get beaten to 90% of all crosses he does actually come for. His kicking is somewhat dodgy and just reminds me of all our other reserve keepers who have come through the ranks with high hopes only for them to fail in the first team. We must get a new keeper, preferably two before the season because if we don`t then we will not have a chance of getting promotion. Every decent team has a decent keeper and at present we do not have one.

Nat Brown leaves Wrexham FC - Evening Leader

Nat Brown leaving Wrexham FC was best for 'both parties'‎


Nat Brown leaves Wrexham FC - Evening Leader

Matt Jansen Leaves Wrexham

Jansen joins non-league Genesis‎ -

Matt Jansen will not re-join non-league Wrexham as the former Premier League striker has signed for Unibond Premier League side Leigh Genesis. ...

Matt Jansen admits his football days are finally over - exclusive

This was originally posted on 28/03/2009

There are plenty of players who could be walking out for England at Wembley today if fate had been a little kinder to them.

There are plenty more who could point to an inconvenient loss of form or bad injury that cost them their shot of playing for their country.

There are more still who could single out something in their personal life that derailed their career or identify the wrong move at the wrong time as the reason they missed out.

And then there's Matt Jansen.

There's a bright, wry, intuitive man sitting at a quiet table in a pub in Alderley Edge finally admitting to himself that he's never going to get it back.

That his last desperate effort to restore his self-confidence by playing for Wrexham in the Blue Square Premier is sliding towards failure. That after nearly two years out of the game, the last few weeks at the North Wales club have done nothing to quiet his demons.

That all the years of fighting to claw his way up to where he was before his accident are about to end in defeat.

That he's never going to play for his country after all. That he's the unluckiest player never to pull on an England shirt.

So check this story out, Leighton Baines, if you're tempted to take it for granted that this match against Slovakia will be the first cap of many.

Listen to it any of you, in fact, if you do anything other than play every England game with the same joy and intensity as if it's your last. It was back in April 2002 that Jansen's England career was just beginning.

He was banging in goals for Blackburn and Sven Goran Eriksson had picked him as a striker in the starting line-up for the final friendly before the World Cup in South Korea and Japan. It would be his debut.

"I'd been told by the manager that I'd start against Paraguay at Anfield," Jansen, 31, said, "but the night before the game I came down with a stomach bug.

"I think my nephew, Eden, who was three or four, had caught it at school and passed it on to me.

"I know people say they'd give their left arm to play for England and that maybe I could have played through it but I was up all night and by the morning, I didn't have the strength to get out of bed.

They put me on a drip. That was it." The Blackburn chairman, John Williams, described the setback as a tragedy. But fortune was about to push him much closer to that.

The night before the England squad for Japan and South Korea was announced, Jansen played and scored for Blackburn at Anfield.

After the game, Eriksson told Blackburn boss Graeme Souness that Jansen would be named among the party of 23 the following day.

"By then, I'd been measured for my World Cup suit," Jansen said. "I've still got the invitation to the gala party that David Beckham threw for squad members on the eve of the departure for the Far East.

"I was driving back home from training, listening to the radio, when Eriksson started reading out the names. He kept reading and reading but he never got to me.

"I thought there must have been a mistake. My phone started ringing with people wanting to know what had happened.

"Turns out, he'd had a long conversation with Tord Grip on the way back to London from Anfield and they'd decided to go with Martin Keown instead of me. Keown didn't play a single minute in the tournament, but there you go."

That was bad. But then it got worse. Lots worse. On the opening weekend of the tournament, still gripped by disappointment, Jansen and his girlfriend Lucy, now his wife, decided to get away from it all and have a few days in Rome.

"We hired a little scooter," Jansen said. "We were driving round the cobbled streets and my girlfriend's helmet fell off. We couldn't find it so we stopped to ask some policemen if it was illegal not to wear one.

"They told us to go back to our hotel, dump the scooter and come back and search for the helmet on foot. I offered to give my helmet to my girlfriend but she insisted I wear it because I was at the front. That saved my life.

"We were 300 yards from the hotel when we got to a crossroads. There were parked cars everywhere and I was edging across it but this taxi smashed into the bike and into the side of my head.

"I was in a coma for six days. We had just been making a wish at the Trevi fountain. I wished we could stay longer in Rome. We stayed longer - it was just that I was in a hospital bed."

Lucy was badly shaken but unhurt and outwardly, at least, Jansen recovered. He astounded doctors by returning to play for Blackburn in five months.

He gave an interview then where he talked as if the sky was still the limit. "My dad has always said that I have never seen him cry," Jansen said seven years ago, "but that will all change the day I cross the white line with an England shirt on. I'm determined to make him cry." His dad never got to shed those tears. Jansen believes now he came back too early and that even if his body was healed, his mind was not. His football career since his accident has been a slow torture.

"My frustration, essentially, is knowing where I was and never being able to get back to that level," Jansen said. "I'm always striving for something that is just out of reach and the longer time goes on, the less chance I have got.

"The accident was a huge knock to my confidence. I was on anti-depressants. My memory was sporadic. Before the accident, I was high on confidence. I was ultra - confident. I desperately wanted the ball all the time.

"After the accident, I stopped believing in myself. I tried too hard. I started to worry about the small things like trapping the ball, controlling the ball. I didn't trust myself any more."

Jansen never really forced his way back into the Blackburn side. He went out on loan to Coventry. That didn't work. Eventually, in 2006, he moved on to Bolton and lasted six months. He turned his back on football for a couple of years after that. He went into property development. But it didn't satisfy his yearning. "It's not really me," he said. "Football is all I know."

So last year, he went back to Blackburn to try to get his fitness back. Then he had a trial at Huddersfield. Then he pitched up at Wrexham to help out his old mate Dean Saunders who is the manager there. It's the last stop. Jansen injured his knee in a defeat to Crawley Town last Saturday. It will probably keep him out for a couple of weeks.

Wrexham may be out of the play-off picture by the time he comes back. "I just wanted to have one last go to see if I could recapture my love for the game but the same old frustrations are still there," Jansen said. "I want to go from zero to hero in a few months. I'm impatient. I get frustrated when I make basic errors. I do great things but I do bad things, too. It's hit and miss.

"In your confident moments, you think 'I can give it another crack'. But I have stopped believing in myself."

When the season ends, Jansen wants to start taking his coaching badges and work towards becoming a manager.

The recent publicity about Brian Clough has made him aware that Clough's playing career was cut short, too. It's something to aim for.

It's not that he needs the money. He's made plenty from the game and his dabbling in property. He lives in a big house. Cristiano Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand live just up the hill.

But they have something he doesn't. They have their confidence. The kind of unshakeable confidence he once had.

"Who knows what the future holds?" Jansen said. "Hopefully, I can get the belief back in some other way."