{"id":217069,"date":"2025-12-29T22:54:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T22:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/217069\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T22:54:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T22:54:08","slug":"wrexham-2-1-preston-north-end-red-dragons-end-memorable-2025-in-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/217069\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrexham 2-1 Preston North End: Red Dragons end memorable 2025 in style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Neither side threatened early on as Arthur Okonkwo did well to ensure Brad Potts &#8211; making his first start of the campaign &#8211; was unable to round off a slick move from the visitors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But an uneventful contest came to life after Josh Windass&#8217; deflected strike looped over the crossbar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Daniel Iversen denied Broadhead and Kieffer Moore in quick succession before Mads Frokjaer-Jensen fired straight at Okonkwo at the other end.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The majority of the 10,616-strong crowd thought the hosts had gone ahead just before the half-hour mark when Okonkwo&#8217;s quick throw set Broadhead free, but Wrexham&#8217;s record signing could only drive an effort wide after a mesmerising run from the halfway line.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Broadhead was clinical six minutes before the interval as Moore crossed from the right to pick out his fellow Wales international who guided his header into the bottom corner of Iversen&#8217;s net.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wrexham were dealt a blow in the final seconds of the opening half as top-scorer Moore was forced off through injury, with Sam Smith replacing the towering frontman at the break.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Lilywhites improved after the restart as Thierry Small tested Okonkwo with a driven shot, although Windass curled wide soon after with Wrexham growing increasingly reliant on counter-attacks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Paul Heckingbottom&#8217;s side spurned a glorious chance to make it 1-1 on the hour mark as Devine could only volley into the side netting after being left unmarked from Ben Whiteman&#8217;s corner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Iversen had to be alert to palm substitute Smith&#8217;s thumping hit wide &#8211; with Callum Doyle missing the target with a header from the resulting corner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Parkinson&#8217;s side were inches away from doubling their lead on 74 minutes as George Thomason&#8217;s looping cross was headed against the post by Smith.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But two substitutes combined as Wrexham made it 2-0 when George Dobson split the Preston defence before Rathbone coolly slotted beyond Iversen 13 minutes from time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Devine set up a tense finish as he fired into the bottom corner but, despite a nervy finale, Wrexham held on for an eighth league win of the season to inflict just a fifth Championship defeat on Preston in 2025-26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neither side threatened early on as Arthur Okonkwo did well to ensure Brad Potts &#8211; making his first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-217069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}