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Wrexham hero Paul Mullin has revealed that he considered quitting the game altogether after a difficult spell at Tranmere Rovers left him out in the cold. The Liverpudlian is a household name these days after firing the Red Dragons to the National League title last season with a record 114 points. The 29-year-old also became one of the stars of the hugely popular Disney Plus TV series ‘Welcome to Wrexham’, cementing his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mullin has plundered 110 goals for the North Wales club in less than two and a half seasons at the Racecourse Ground, but although his hero status is firmly intact at Wrexham, it has not always been so easy for the prolific marksman.
After turning out for both Everton and boyhood club Liverpool at youth level, Mullin was let go by the Reds after current Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper, who was a youth coach for the Merseyside club at the time, told him he needed to look elsewhere.
Mullin went on to play for Morecambe and Swindon Town before returning to Merseyside in 2018 to join League Two side Tranmere Rovers. The Birkenhead club qualified for the play-offs before clinching promotion to League One with a 1-0 victory against Newport County at Wembley, but Mullin was an unused substitute and his involvement over the season was marginal at best.
Rovers boss Micky Mellon would regularly prefer fans’ favourite James Norwood up front, leaving Mullin out in the cold. Now the Wrexham striker has revealed in his new autobiography ‘My Wrexham Story’ how Mellon’s treatment of him made retirement from football a genuine consideration.
Mullin wrote: “Playing under Micky had brought me to the unbelievable position where I actually hated football. Hated it. I didn’t want to be at training, nothing. I just couldn’t see the point anymore. No matter what I did, how I played, it made no difference. Micky didn’t like me and that was that. One morning I actually said to Mollie, ‘I don’t want to go. I’m not going to play anyway. I can’t be arsed anymore. I just want to stay at home.’
“Micky never did properly justify why I wasn’t playing. There was one time I went into his office and asked him straight what the issue was. ‘You need to run more,’ he said. I got the stats – I ran the third most in the team. That then changed to ‘You need to sprint more.’ I was done.
“What can you say to someone who’s always going to throw some nonsense back in your face? It might seem that I’m bitter about my time at Tranmere, but really I’m not. To be honest, I’m grateful for it because it led to everything that’s happened since.
“I learned so much from Micky, about myself and about how I work best in a team. Inadvertently he made me mentally stronger than I’d ever been. Tranmere didn’t defeat me or get me down, the situation did. I fell out of love with football because I wasn’t playing.”
Mullin went on to reveal how he felt Jim Bentley was a much better manager for him at Morecambe as he was always pulling the positives out of his game.
The striker added: “Micky was just the wrong manager for me. Jim Bentley, on the other hand, was exactly right. Jim pointed out the positives, Micky the negatives. Jim cared for people.
“If Micky cared for people, he rarely showed it. If you weren’t playing on Saturday, he wouldn’t speak to you. He picked his team and that was that. If that’s his way, fair enough, but I always remember something Alex Ferguson said years ago. Fergie reckoned that the most important players for a manager are the ones who aren’t playing because they’re the ones a boss will need at some point. With Micky, I didn’t feel respected at all. No matter what I did, nothing was ever good enough.”
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Mullin’s time at Tranmere wasn’t completely without joy, however. In his second season, Rovers faced then-Premier League side Watford in the FA CUP Third round, fighting back from 3-0 down to draw 3-3, with Mullin scoring the crucial equaliser from the penalty spot.
With the tie taken back to Prenton Park, Mullin was the hero as his extra-time header did for the Hornets 2-1, causing a huge upset and earning Tranmere a lucrative fourth-round home tie against Manchester United.
But just a week later he departed for Cambridge United on a six-month loan and it was here where his career truly took off. After signing a permanent deal in the summer, Mullin went on to score 32 goals for the U’s helping them to romp to the League Two title.
He was named EFL League Two Player of the Season and even had a stand named after him at Cambridge, but stunned the lower league football scene in July 2021 by rejecting a new contract offer to join the Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney revolution at Wrexham in the fifth tier of English football.
There can be no doubt that it was a masterstroke for the scouser, who has now gone on to become one of the highest-profile lower-league names in English football.
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