Mark OgdenApr 26, 2025, 04:47 PM ET
WREXHAM, Wales -- Wrexham are one step away from the Premier League. The club with the Hollywood owners is now writing a script way beyond the most extraordinary plots in Tinseltown, but after achieving a historic third successive promotion, they are potentially one year away from joining Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal in football's most glamorous league.
When Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought Wrexham for just £2 million in February 2021, the Welsh team had been marooned in English football's fifth tier for 13 years and were facing the likes of Wealdstone, Dover Athletic and King's Lynn Town in league games. The Premier League wasn't even a dream; Wrexham's fans just wanted their cash-strapped club to live to fight another day.
The transformation of the club under "Rob and Ryan" has been so incredible, though, that Wrexham are now within touching distance of the Premier League after returning to the second tier for the first time since relegation at the end of the 1981-82 season.
"Our goal is to make it to the Premier League," Reynolds said in a clear statement of intent after promotion was secured.
No club in English football has ever been promoted in three consecutive seasons. Until now. Wrexham's 3-0 win against Charlton Athletic at Stok Cae Ras on Saturday ensured promotion from League One to the EFL Championship to continue the team's incredible rise from the National League.
Now the hard work really begins.
Wrexham's unstoppable rise has been a fairytale rooted in smart management and investment on and off the pitch. The club has spent wisely rather than lavishly on players with Sam Smith, whose two goals against Charlton after Ollie Rathbone's opener helped secure victory, becoming Wrexham's record signing for a relatively modest £2 million in January.
But the leap from League One to the Championship is huge. Reynolds and McElhenney, and the New York-based billionaires the Allyn family, who became minority investors in the club in October 2024, face a pivotal summer when the dust settles on promotion.
"That's for tomorrow," McElhenney said when asked about the challenge of the Championship. "Today is just for enjoying the moment. We can leave that until 12:01!"
Ipswich Town, Leicester City and Southampton, relegated from the Premier League to the Championship this season, all will receive a so-called "parachute payment" of £39 million to ease the financial blow of relegation from the top flight. Big-city teams like Sunderland, Coventry City and Sheffield teams United and Wednesday all have played in front of average attendances in in excess of 26,000 this season.
Wrexham's average attendance of 12,757 during their 2024-25 League One campaign -- 12,774 saw the win against Charlton -- would be the third-smallest in the Championship this season. Those numbers alone point to the club taking a leap into the big leagues next year, facing rivals who have much greater earning potential through the turnstiles.
But Wrexham's advantage is their ability to make up for that financial shortfall through their owners' ability to attract more high-profile sponsorship deals like the front-of-shirt partnership they have with United Airlines that enabled the club's turnover to climb to £26.7 million -- growth of 155% on the previous year -- in accounts for the year ended Jun 30, 2024. Those figures, which reported commercial revenue increasing to £13.18 million from £1.88 million, are the most recent published by the club and only cover their season in League Two. They'll grow exponentially with every level that Wrexham climb up the ladder.
It means that when manager Phil Parkinson draws up a list of potential signings this summer -- players with the Championship and even Premier League experience needed to lift the levels of the team -- he will be able to target Premier League free agents of the ilk of Manchester United's Jonny Evans, Leicester forward Jamie Vardy, Everton defender Michael Keane or Newcastle United's Callum Wilson.
Even though Wrexham have the finances and Hollywood appeal to tempt many players to drop into the Championship to play for them, it might be beyond the magnetism of even Reynolds and McElhenney to put them in the running for Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne or Inter Miami CF's Lionel Messi. But this is Wrexham, so who knows?
"We will take the Championship full-on, just as we have done in recent years," Parkinson said. "We are going into one of the most competitive leagues in world football and it is going to be a huge challenge. We will sit back, recruit the right players and try to get the squad as strong as possible. And then enjoy the ride."
When they started their rise from the National League, it was done by hiring a proven EFL manager in Parkinson, who has now achieved six promotions, and persuading players like Paul Mullin and Elliot Lee to drop two divisions to sign up for the Wrexham rollercoaster. Mullin and Lee have become peripheral figures, victims of the club's rapid rise, with players of a higher calibre now taking their places. But the blueprint of getting players from a higher level to take a step down is what Wrexham must continue to adhere to, and it is why their fans can expect an exciting summer of recruitment.
Wrexham have already performed a football miracle by winning promotion three seasons in a row, but the next promotion -- if it comes -- would be a different level of achievement entirely.
Ipswich, Norwich City, Southampton and Watford all have gone straight from League One, through the Championship and into the Premier League; while Luton Town completed their journey from the National League to the Premier League in 11 years, so the precedent has been set. Now it's Wrexham's turn to put them all in the shade.
