JUST when you started to think that this was going to be Wrexham's year, the Reds lose the manager that has given the club so much-renewed optimism this season.

Loyalty in football is a rare thing and while Dean Keates would have improved his managerial CV with a promotion play-off win on it, an offer to manage your home-town club, the team you used to play for and who compete in League One was just too good to turn down.

For such a young, rookie boss, Keates has been given a handsome three-and-a-half year deal by The Saddlers, who triggered a clause in his Racecourse contract that made the switch go through much quicker than some Wrexham supporters would have imagined.

Opinion will be divided among the Reds fans, who have given Keates so much support this season.

The majority will wish him all the best, thank him for what he gave to the club as a player and a manager. But some of those fans who would have looked to Keates to lead them back into the promised land of the Football League, may have been tempted to give the Bescot Stadium a two-fingered salute as they headed down the M6 to Woking yesterday.

While the football has hardly been thrill-a-minute, Keates has built a team who are difficult to beat.

They came within touching distance of becoming title contenders earlier in the campaign, but the two times they did reach top spot this season, they blew it.

But a play-off place is still a probability with eight games of the season to go - and it's that scenario that may cause a few headaches in the boardroom in the search for Keates' replacement.

No-one knows if Keates will try and take Andy Davies and Carl Darlington with him to Walsall.

They took charge at Woking yesterday and for stability, it would make perfect sense to hand them control until the end of the season.

But Wrexham Football Club, despite being stuck in the non-league doldrums for more than a decade, are still held in high esteem.

And that's why a cast of thousands will be linked to the Racecourse hotseat role. It's whether the directors of the club, who hadn't done that well in their manager recruitment policy until Keates' appointment, may be swayed be the big-names out there.

A club statement issued just as swiftly as Keates' here-today-gone-tomorrow departure, said that moves had already been made to find a successor.

That could mean Darlington may be the man Wrexham will put their faith in.

A Wrexham fan, a well-respected coach and having had two stints with the club under Keates and Kevin Wilkin, someone who has the respect of the players.

Another tick to the Darlington box, is that he has past experience of unheralded success in the Welsh Premier League with The New Saints.

There has always been a stigma in a football world where snobbery definitely exists that the Welsh Premier League is no good.

But if Wrexham - and I'm sure Darlington would have been pushing his name forward - would have taken a chance on Scott Quigley earlier in his career, then who knows where the Reds would be now.

Darlington is in with a good shout but back to the loyalty in football line and would Macclesfield Town manager John Askey - the best manager in the National League - be tempted again to go for the Wrexham job?

Watch this space...