Wrexham reignited their Championship playoff hopes with a 2-0 home victory over Stoke.<\/p>\n
Hull’s home draw with Birmingham means Wrexham have cut the gap to sixth place to two points with three games left.<\/p>\n
There was an air of anxiety at the SToK Cae Ras after consecutive defeats to Southampton and Birmingham, but first-half goals in the space of 69 seconds through George Thomason and Josh Windass eased the mood.<\/p>\n
For Stoke, it was a sixth successive away defeat and the season can not end quick enough for the visitors, who drop to 17th.<\/p>\n
Wrexham doubled their advantage through Josh Windass just one minute after scoring the opener.<\/p>\n
Photo by Gareth Copley\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Back-to-back defeats for the first time since the opening week of the season persuaded Wrexham boss Phil Parkinson to make four changes, with the eye-catching switch being in goal.<\/p>\n
Wales<\/a> international Danny Ward<\/a> had not played since dislocating an elbow at the end of August but got the nod to start ahead of Arthur Okonkwo.<\/p>\n Wrexham started as if their season was on the line and there were calls for a fourth-minute penalty after Sam Smith was shoved over by Bosun Lawal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Referee Adam Herczeg was not interested and contact may have been outside the box in any case.<\/p>\n Thomason advanced 50 yards unchallenged after dispossessing Sorba Thomas<\/a> to send a shot straight at Gavin Bazunu<\/a>, but Wrexham’s momentum was slowed by an efficient Stoke offside trap.<\/p>\n The breakthrough came after Lawal failed to clear George Dobson’s free-kick and Ollie Rathbone, choosing placement rather than power, saw his effort cleared off the line by Ben Pearson<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thomason’s resulting 31st-minute corner flew straight over the head of Bazunu and into the far corner of his net, with Windass attempting to help it over the line.<\/p>\n There was no denying Windass just over a minute later after the forward capitalised on Aaron Cresswell’s mistake to slot past Bazunu for his 13th league goal of the season.<\/p>\n Stoke showed some ambition after the break as Dan Scarr blocked Bae Jun-ho’s goalbound effort but Wrexham were almost gifted a third after Thomason charged down the left and crossed.<\/p>\n Jesurun Rak-Sakyi’s panicked clearance struck Smith and flew to safety when it could have easily embarrassed the defender.<\/p>\n The stretching Smith the headed over after Thomason and Windass had combined and Bazunu failed to collect.<\/p>\n Stoke went close to halving the deficit in the closing moments when Lamine Cisse<\/a> struck the crossbar from close range, and their final hopes evaporated when Million Manhoef<\/a> drove wide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wrexham reignited their Championship playoff hopes with a 2-0 home victory over Stoke. Hull’s home draw with Birmingham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-398993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}