HINDSIGHT is a wonderful thing but so is forward-thinking.

And the Wrexham board of directors must use the latter when they begin their search for a fifth manager in 18 months.

Many would - and should - question the decision-makers when it comes to football matters at The Racecourse. We all know the world football management is cut-throat but five different bosses in a year and a half is laughable!

And here’s any even better statistic for you. Handed a three-and-a-half year deal, Bryan Hughes lasted just seven months in the hot-seat.

So maybe someone new - instead of the current board - should be in charge of the appointment process this time around.

And if that was the case, how exactly would they go about the recruitment process?

Well, in Brian Flynn - who managed Wrexham for longer than any other previous boss has done in the club's history - they have a man who came up with the perfect masterplan when times were hard in the late Eighties.

Flynn's role as assistant manager to the departed Hughes wasn't particularly given the supporters' seal of approval. But the 64-year may offer some wise old words to the men in power at in the Wrexham board room.

Dixie McNeil laid the early foundations but when the Reds' legend had had enough of the old board's penny-pinching policies, former Wales international Flynn, who had been brought in to add experience to a fresh-faced side of youngsters, took over.

Clubs had voted that there would be no relegation from Division Four of the Football League in the 1990/91.

That gave Wrexham the chance to blood the likes of Chris Armstrong, Phil Hardy, Lee Jones, Gareth Owen, Waynne Phillips and Steve Watkin. All home-grown talent and top talent to boot!

The Colliers Park Centre of Excellence was churning talented teenagers off the production line and that first season experience when Flynn's side finished bottom of the entire league was vital in their development.

Six months later, you all know what happened next. Wrexham - 92nd in the Football League the season before - beat Arsenal - the team that finished top of the pile - in one of the biggest FA Cup shocks on the competition's history.

Promotion followed in the 1992/93 season and so did the crop of youngsters breaking into the team, including the man sacked as Wrexham manager this week, Hughes.

Whether Flynn and first team coach Carl Darlington follow Hughes out of the door remains to be seen after the club issued a terse statement on the manager's departure late on Wednesday night.

But youth should be the way forward for a football club who first benefitted from such a policy under the late, great John Neal in the Seventies.

That's where the money should be invested and I know some Wrexham supporters won't like this but forget all about promotion and the play-offs.

Let's scour North East Wales and get some Wrexham lads and Flintshire's finest youngsters in the team. To be fair to Hughes, he tried it against Ayr United in the Scottish Challenge Cup and it worked. The Reds won.

As long as the club stays the right side of the bottom four line in the National League come the end of April is all that matters.

After so many failed attempts to find an escape route back into the Football League, maybe it's best to go back to what you know.