SO we’re back in League One. That’s great, but we need to remember a very important detail. We were never actually relegated from League One in the first place.

We were the first club in the Football League to suffer a points deduction for going into administration in 2004, and that cost us our place in the third tier.

If we’d been allowed to keep hold of the points we’d earned, we would have finished 18th, two places above the relegation zone, and MK Dons would have gone down instead. We even out-scored fourth-placed Brentford!

I’m not at all averse to financial regulations controlling football clubs’ spending, and if we’d been guilty of trying to gain an unfair advantage I’d accept the punishment.

However, the penalty we suffered was a political decision, not one which was based on looking into the details of our case.

A political decision which, ultimately, led to disaster after disaster:

• Another relegation from a division we shouldn’t have been in to begin with.

• The horror of seeing the club on the brink of extinction and having to be saved by fans rallying to pay a bond to allow the 2011-12 season to commence.

• A second run-in with a different set of owners.

Essentially, our problem was Leicester City. They’d achieved success by spending extravagantly on their squad, then going into administration. This meant their debts were essentially wiped and they could continue without penalty. They weren’t the first club to do this.

Understandably, the Football League decided that clubs should be prevented from doing this, and introduced an automatic 10-point penalty for entering into administration.

As a deterrent from trying to pull off a crafty trick and gain an unfair advantage over your opponents, this was absolutely fair enough. However, that wasn’t the only reason a club might have for going down the administration route.

Unfortunately, we were the first club to take that decision after the Football League brought in the penalty. We didn’t go into administration to avoid paying the bills; we did it because a brief opportunity arose to take that step and therefore take the club out of the hands of an owner who seemed likely to drive us out of existence.

Sadly, our appeal was turned down. Our case was compelling: self preservation. However, the Football League wasn’t about to create a rule and then the first club who broke it get away with it.

There is a silver lining though. Look back at the list of woes we suffered as a consequence of the Football League’s stubborn insistence on applying a 10-point deduction in inappropriate circumstances.

Then, remind yourself that there’s another consequence of that ludicrous, cruel decision.

If we hadn’t suffered through all that, there’s no way that Humphrey Ker would have calculated that we’re the underdog story Rob and Ryan would want to take control of. They’d have bought Hartlepool instead, and we’d probably be in League Two, scraping along and muttering about their good fortune as they leap-frogged us into League One.

If you’ve suffered through those 20 years of pain, ask yourself this: what if you could go back in time and tell your younger self that it’d all end in us enjoying back-to-back promotions with a squad of iconic players to compare with the legends of 1978?

That we’d have the resources to keep building thanks to a pair of philanthropic superstar owners who have also given a real fillip to the town (let’s not blow your younger mind with the whole city status thing - this is enough to compute in one go. Best not to mention Trump either).

That we’d be building a new Kop with a 5,500 capacity, and harbour ambitious plans for the rest of the Racecourse.

I think your 2004 self would have a few questions.

Most obviously, who is this haggard, vaguely familiar pensioner that has just materialised in their front room, just as they were settling down to watch Harry Hill’s first episode as narrator of “You’ve Been Framed”?

Secondly, are Busted now bigger than the Beatles?

And most obviously, who will win the next Grand National?

It’d take some effort, and quite a lot of time to explain the saga of Wrexham AFC over the next 20 years (although if you managed to bring a stack of Evening Leaders across time, that’d speed the process up considerably).

They’d come to an obvious conclusion though: sometimes you have to suffer to get what you want. We’re in an unimaginably good place right now, and if you successfully convince yourself that you’ve managed to pull off a Ghost of Christmas to Come-style stunt and it’s all true, I reckon they’d happily accept the pain for the ultimate pay-off.