Wrexham continue to ride on the crest of triple promotion wave – can they really make it to the Premier League?

The final episode of Disney+’s latest season of Welcome to Wrexham is titled ‘Do a Wrexham’. Not so long ago, that phrase would not amount to much. In fact, to ‘do a Wrexham’ meant to teeter on the brink of disaster. To snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

To support Wrexham was to make friends with anguish and agony. The club was 12 hours from going bust as recently as 2011, standing on the cusp of extinction before being rescued by its long-suffering fanbase, who, in their own words, were “starting to fall out of love with it”.

The definition of that phrase now, however, means something entirely new. Wrexham has been reborn, ready to embark on their first season back in the second tier since 1981-82, chasing a fourth successive promotion. To do so would be beyond remarkable, a dream wilder than even Hollywood’s elite could conjure up.

Saturday 9th August 11:00am


Kick off 12:30pm

Before minds wander and expectations get too inflated, Phil Parkinson’s side must negotiate the most notoriously unpredictable league of any in the football pyramid. The Championship is quite literally a minefield.

According to Opta’s supercomputer, Wrexham have a 20.2 per cent chance of immediate relegation back to League One. Fellow promoted side Charlton Athletic have been offered similar (20.1 per cent).

To avoid such a scenario, celebrity owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, the catalysts behind the club’s transformative years and reason for its new global appeal, have hatched a plan. Spend big.

Birmingham City – part-owned by former American NFL star Tom Brady – might have beaten Wrexham to the League One title last season, but it is the Welsh club who have splashed the cash ahead of a definitive campaign with eight summer signings. Their transfer record has been shattered twice, while there has been a first foray into the European market, sourcing talent from overseas to supplement unprecedented demands.

These are halcyon days for a club that had only broken its record transfer fee once in 45 years with the acquisition of Ollie Palmer from AFC Wimbledon for £300,000 in 2023. Trading in this latest window has required an extra zero. Fees for Empoli left-back Liberato Cacace and Nottingham Forest midfielder Lewis O’Brien ventured into the millions.

Bolton captain George Thomason was also lured away for a seven-figure sum. Life comes at you quick in the big leagues but Wrexham have been planning for this eventuality. Their ratio of wages to turnover stands at a healthy 41 per cent – comfortably the best in the EFL.

Next on the shopping list was experience: Conor Coady and Kiefer Moore together bring Premier League and international nous. Coady arrived with 198 games’ worth of top-flight knowledge and 10 England caps, while Moore gained promotions out of the Championship with both Bournemouth and Ipswich.

Reports over the possible signing of £7.5m-rated Ipswich forward Nathan Broadhead are yet to come to fruition, but is another obvious indicator of elevated intent.

This is a level of expenditure never before witnessed in north Wales. It is worth noting that Wrexham not only had the highest revenue of any club to ever compete in League Two, but they also generated more than every club in League One and 11 clubs in the Championship, according to Swiss Ramble. Where money flows, success usually follows.

A word of warning, though: the club’s rapid rise from the shadows of non-League football to the heady heights of the Championship carries with it great risk. Over the past decade, 15 newly promoted teams to the Championship have fallen back down to League One within two years.

Brute-force spending has led to quick wins. Wrexham have shot through the leagues at lightning speed, and while this may have been presented as a proper underdog story – Hollywood loves those – that’s far from reality.

As a National League side, the club’s wage bill was £2.5m higher than the division’s average. The sequence for success went something like this: buy better players, pay higher wages, increase chances of winning.

The same logic was applied in League Two and League One: outspend rivals to get promoted. Sounds simple. But the climb is now much steeper. While it was relatively easy to convince players too good for the level to join the Wrexham project in the lower leagues for more than market value, the same trick is difficult to replicate in the top two tiers.

A push for the top division will require spending power on a par with those Championship clubs that already benefit from Premier League parachute payments. Leicester, Ipswich and first opponents Southampton among them.

Wrexham will have to buy better and wiser than those around them, while sacrificing the sentimental stuff. Cult hero Paul Mullin, who was so revered by Ryan Reynolds for his contribution to the club that he cast him as an extra in Deadpool & Wolverine last year, is among those to leave this summer. It’s time for a new roster of champions.

At last count, 35 players were listed on Wrexham’s official first-team page – EFL rules only permit a squad size of 25 and so a trim is required. The profile of those players might need a tweak too.

Recruitment in the lower leagues has typically targeted players at the backend of their careers – take 36-year-old captain James McClean as a prime example – which has left Parkinson with the second-oldest squad in the division (27.7), only beaten by Derby County (27.8). For context, Sheffield United, who are the bookies’ favourites to finish top, have the youngest team (24.1).

Given where the club was just a few short years ago, scuffling miserably along outside the Football League, these surroundings must feel miraculous. But really, the work has only just begun. This global phenomenon of a football club, made internationally famous by its box-office A-list owners, wants more. They want the Premier League. And it’s no longer a pipe dream.

On Saturday, manager Parkinson meets his boyhood club as Wrexham’s bid for the top-flight gets going live on Sky Sports. It has the potential to be a fascinating start as Southampton, who have spent 12 of the previous 13 years playing in the Premier League, attempt to show themselves as strong candidates for promotion too. A master vs apprentice style match-up to kickstart the show. Seems fitting.

And you never know, maybe they’ll do a Wrexham.

Watch Southampton vs Wrexham live on Sky Sports Football on Saturday, kick-off 12.30pm