Paul Mullin

[jimexotic]

"Never in doubt"

I love him, he made that all himself

[insertname]

Probably not a pen on reflection but Wrexham have probably earned it after the disappointment of the last game.

Not sure I like penalties straight down the middle but it went in...and against the only keeper to save an Ivan Toney penalty too!

[allezlesrouges]

So clever the way he made it look like a penalty. VAR overturns that but you can tell his game intelligence by the way he won that. F*cking buried it as well, love a player that can dispatch a pen like that

[jimexotic]

They were denied two blatant penalties in the first game so they deserve this slice of fortune. Pens down the middle, when they're hit high and powerful it's fine, as he proved!

[insertname]

He's a tricky customer for a top championship side to deal with. Could have been through on goal prior to the penalty if he'd been spotted.

[dai]

Scored an emphatic pen. Really doesnt look out of place at all here.

As I type this he’s won another pen!!

Oh fuck, he misses it….

[jimexotic]

Here we go again......damn

[jimexotic]

Hell of a save

[allezlesrouges]

Everyone misses a pen from time to time, but again clever movement and body positioning with the way he won it. Again showing his intelligence

[CrackityJones]

This

[dai]

Bollocks, looks injured.

[jimexotic]

He'll be alright, I don't think it's as that bad, he's tired and tweaked it a bit. Hell of a performance from him tonight, briliant.

[dai]

Ok, he’s back on! Hope he doesnt worsen whatever issue he has.

Edit: Officially gone off now. Commentary are drooling over him though.

[surge]

He's done really well tonight and quick thinking has got two penalties, and he tried to buy a third too.

I'm coming round to saying he's deserving of a look. Nothing definite, it is a risk, but are those in favour saying both him and Aaron Collins or just one of them?

Thewelshdragon on twitter makes point that next international camp in March probably wouldn't do Wrecsam or Mullin favours to be on bench. That might be the thinking that swings it to Collins instead.

[dai]

Wrexham have become very average after he’s gone off.

[quetzal]

Hope Page doesn’t have tunnel vision on his favourites, Mullin deserves a friendly start

[dlwilliams]

The next friendly currently pencilled in is Gibraltar, but it wouldn't really be a massive shock if he put one or two past those and it wouldn't really tell us much. The ideal scenario would be if we were 3 or 4 up against Latvia/Armenia with twenty or so minutes left and throw him on then. We'd know more after that.

[jimexotic]

It's more likely that he'd be coming on against the likes of Latvia or Armenia with the game evenly poised, it's going to be a very difficult few years of grinding out results, a scenario that he looks like he could be very useful for.

[allezlesrouges]

Once again it was his ability to lead the line that really stood out to me. Holding up the ball, clever little turns, clever link up passes, several times he was in on goal but his team mates didn't have the vision to find him

For me I really think we should be calling him up now. 3 solid performances against Championship opposition, including 2 MOTM performances against Sheff Utd. He's outsmarted international defenders for those two pens as well

He's a proper wild card

[morg]

Agreed. I'd put him in the squad for Croatia. He's proved that he can trouble top end Championship opposition. He can only improve playing alongside better players. Can't conceive of a situation where the phrase "If only we'd brought on Mark Harris instead of Mullin" would be used

He's done enough to get the nod.

[captainhaddock]

Feb 2, 2023 12:23:44 GMT iot said:

Yeah, I completely agree that he wouldn't have got that same offer for a championship club, otherwise i think it's very likely he would have gone there. Championship clubs clearly weren't confident enough that he would have an impact at that level to invest what an average championship player earns. It will be interesting to see if that changes over the summer. If it does and he has an ok-ish start, I would be 100% for including him in our squad for the qualifiers at the end of the year. If he doesn't move higher up, considering his age, I personally don't think it would be a wise decision to call him up. 

you have missed that his main reason for coming to Wrexham was the fact he could live at home with his two young kids and wife, instead of living in a flat miles away and seeing them for 2/3 days a week, he put his family first before playing higher up for the same money, who wouldnt?

[iot]

no i haven't, already covered that in previous posts where I pointed out that there are four lower to mid championship clubs all within a similar distance or closer to Liverpool. And that's before even looking at League 1 and 2 where there will be many more. I think you'd have to be quite naive to believe the move wasn't primarily financially motivated. 

[iot]

Thought he was excellent last night. That movement to win the second penalty was just top class. Really impressed by the way he made the ball stick - he was bullying the defenders at times and they really struggled to handle him. I wouldn't mind seeing him called up at all, but still unclear on his pathway into the side given the type of games we've got coming up in the short term and the long wait until the next opportunity to experiment, by which time he will be almost 29. I just wish he was a couple of years younger.

[surge]

I see it as: 

i) financial now - offer probably wasn't a million miles away from competitors, though still not as much as other initially assumed 
ii) work life balance - the element described by the club and as fixtures pile up more and more footballers will consider this element 
iii) financial in the future - staring in the documentary probably allows him better financial future than playing for team only known in the UK. There's a chance his next move might be the MLS rather than slowly dropping down leagues in England, and then he'll have convention work afterwards too.  

I don't think this is a negative or takes away from the fact that he was thinking about his family more than just money. 

[allezlesrouges]

Feb 8, 2023 11:15:39 GMT iot said:

Thought he was excellent last night. That movement to win the second penalty was just top class. Really impressed by the way he made the ball stick - he was bullying the defenders at times and they really struggled to handle him. I wouldn't mind seeing him called up at all, but still unclear on his pathway into the side given the type of games we've got coming up in the short term and the long wait until the next opportunity to experiment, by which time he will be almost 29. I just wish he was a couple of years younger.

His pathway is more simple than perhaps we might think. We'd ideally want to phase him in through a few friendlies, that's true

However, the way I see this going is selecting him for Croatia & Latvia, and using him as an impact player if we're chasing a goal. Page will then know how he looks in and around the camp, and we might see from a 15-20 minute whether he can be an impact player. I mean if he were to come on and score an equaliser against Croatia for example, how many people would be against starting him up front with Kieffer against the Latvians?

I'm not saying it should necessarily all happen that quickly, but I think it makes sense for him to be in the squad now, and then it's up to him to make an impression. We may start him for the first time in the September friendly with the idea that we like what we've seen in cameos

[underwood]

If Wrexham don’t go up this season he will be gone, end of story.

[jimexotic]

International defenders really struggled with him last night to the point where you have to say that they couldn't handle him. He was drawing people out of position, drawing fouls, creating spaces for others to run into while still managing to make a nuisance of himself in and around the box.

I don't think he's leaving Wrexham unless a mad offer comes in and he's offered big money. What he's doing now at Wrexham against Championship sides is similar to what Peter Taylor was doing around 50 years ago against top division sides when at then third tier Palace. That earned Taylor an England call up despite playing in the third tier of English football. He scored on his England debut, the winning goal, against us!

[underwood]

It would be a mad offer though, I’m thinking £5m from a West Brom, Sunderland or a Middlesbrough.

[quetzal]

Watched 2nd half on ESPN star plus in this part of the world. Argentinian pundit in the commentary kept on referring to him as a phenomenal player. A year ago I probably was in the ‘non league player’ camp but the reality is that he would walk into a Cardiff or Swansea team right now, so why not the Cymru squad.

[insertname]

Feb 8, 2023 14:47:05 GMT underwood said:

It would be a mad offer though, I’m thinking £5m from a West Brom, Sunderland or a Middlesbrough.

As good as he’s looked I can’t see anyone paying 5 million for a conference player when the basis for that would be three games in the FA cup and one good season in league two. As a guideline, 5 million is what Ivan Toney cost Brentford from league one Peterborough and that’s one of the biggest lower league signings in history.