IT'S Transfer Deadline Eve, and football fans all over the world will be unable to sleep, excited at what the next day will bring.

A Bulgarian youth international? A disaffected Stoke City reserve? A loan striker with no first team experience who is prolific in the Under-18 Premier League? Who knows?

An annual day of communion as we all share the experience of seeing Harry Redknapp leaning out of the window of his car, Sky Sports reporters standing in the pouring rain at the gates of a Premier League club’s training ground, telling us there’s “no activity here”, and Jim White telling us of “incredible” deals which need to be completed before the transfer window slams shut.

Until recently, we missed out on such thrills.

There’s not much to get worked up over if you can’t afford to buy any new players.

The main issue on deadline day was whether we’d lose one of our best players to someone in a higher division.

Not that that happened too often, as in recent years we’d rip our squad up so comprehensively that almost all our signings were new arrivals themselves.

Heck, there were even seasons when we weren’t even affected by the transfer window!

The deadline meant nothing to us; the only thing slamming shut was the door which led to promotion, usually around October.

It’s different now. Under our current ownership, we’ve every right to be excited about the closing of the transfer window. We can play a full part in the game, including that most popular of pastimes: rumours of players sighted in Wrexham who are going to sign for us. These tall tales keep us all entertained.

Lionel Messi was spotted having a full English at the Miners’, someone’s cousin showed Florian Wirtz round St Giles, and Kostas Tsimikas got a coffee from Starbucks in Rhostyllen. Actually, that last one’s true: I turned up late for a coffee with my work colleagues to find they’d chatted to the Greek left back. Not that there’s a story behind it: I don’t reckon Wrexham are looking to tempt him from his regular role sitting in the second row of the dug-out at Anfield.

You’d be surprised how desperate people can be to spread a false story. Obviously, sometimes it’s a joke, but not always. Whether it’s a need to seek attention, I don’t know, but some people are obsessed with getting the story out first, whether it’s true or not.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the Racecourse car park, and I noticed a man sitting in a car. Absent-mindedly, I made eye contact. He immediately ducked down. Half an hour later I was walking back to my car. He was still there.

There’s plenty of them apparently, who sit there all day on some weird stake-out, hoping to catch a glimpse of Vinicius Junior.

Suddenly, our situation has shifted. The drama of deadline day is relevant to us. We have money to spend and the kudos to close deals.

Not that there are obvious gaps to close in Phil Parkinson’s squad. Paul Mullin’s injury meant we were consumed with the idea of drafting in another striker, but Jack Marriott’s excellent start to the season, added to Mullin’s return last Saturday, means the speculation has diminished.

Parkinson’s no fool. He knows that if you stand still you’ll end up going backwards.

He is on a perpetual quest to improve his squad, building and building until it can live in a higher division. So, even if there’s no obvious problem in a certain position, he’ll still bring a player in if he considers him to be better than what he already has.

I guess that’s why hiding in your car all day, hoping to catch a glimpse of Frenkie de Jong, is a viable option these days.

We ended a seven-game run without a win against Reading last Saturday, and now we face an opponent who have an even better recent record against us. We haven’t beaten Peterborough in our last 10 attempts and haven’t scored past them in a league game for 381 minutes!

That was an own goal too, so to find the most recent Wrexham player to score past the Posh you have to go back a further 71 minutes to Andy Holt’s 88th minute equaliser, which earned a point at London Road in October 2005.

You might have noticed by now that London Road is not a happy place for Wrexham goalkeepers: we’ve only kept two clean sheets in our last 18 games there!

In the course of that run, going back to 1984, we’ve lost 10 games, drawn five and won just three!

Our most recent win at London Road came in February 2002 and in keeping with our recent visits there, it was dramatic.

A Craig Faulconbridge equaliser ensured we went in level, but Michael Blackwood scored immediately from the restart to put us ahead.

United equalised, but Hector Sam (pictured above) earned the three points with a 90th minute penalty.