After Wrexham won their third successive promotion -- the first-ever team in the history of organized English soccer to do so -- their billionaire, superhero co-owner had a message for the haters.
"I remember the first time I did a press conference there," Ryan Reynolds said, "and one of the media people asked me, 'How far do you think this dream goes?' And I said, 'Well, we're going to take this team to the Premier League,' and they laughed and even the players laughed. But they're not laughing now. We're in the Championship."
Ever since the "Deadpool" star paired with Rob Mac -- formerly Rob McElhenney of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" -- to buy the club in 2021 and turned the experience into a docuseries, they've been talking about the Premier League.
"We say this all the time, but we want to be in the Premier League, as crazy as that sounds to some people," Reynolds told ESPN in 2023. "If it is theoretically possible to go from the fifth tier in professional football to the Premier League, why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we use our last drop of blood to get there? We're in it for the ride. This is a multi-decade project."
They're not the only ones talking about it, either. Earlier this year, NPR's "Morning Edition" ran a segment that not only suggested Wrexham will one day make the Premier League, but that they'll eventually host Real Madrid for a Champions League match.
Now, I'm guilty, too. Back when they earned promotion from the National League to League Two, I wrote a piece with the following headline: "Could Ryan Reynolds' Wrexham honestly ever reach Premier League?" And, well, they are one season away from promotion to the Premier League, as they will make their Championship debut on Saturday against Southampton. But they're also one season away from relegation to League One.
While they've mostly been able to overpower their lower-league opponents with brute-force spending, the club now face an altogether different kind of challenge in England's second tier. For the first time since Reynolds and Mac took over, Wrexham are going to be serious underdogs on and off the field.
What happens when you're promoted to the Championship?
Over the past 12 seasons, 36 clubs have been promoted from League One up to the Championship. Here's what happened to each one after a season:
Stayed up: 25 (69%)
Relegated: 10 (28%)
Promoted: 1 (3%)
If we go off the base rates, then it's nine times more likely that a promoted club to the Championship gets relegated back down to League One than it gets promoted to the Premier League. Except, if you squint hard enough, you can see some similarities between Wrexham and the only team that made the leap in one season.
Under first-time manager Kieran McKenna, Ipswich Town were promoted from League One in 2022-23 after finishing second with 98 points and a plus-66 goal differential. The following season, they were then promoted from the Championship after finishing second with 96 points and a plus-35 goal differential.
Wrexham, of course, were promoted from League One in 2023-24 after finishing second with 88 points and a plus-37 goal differential. And then this past season, they won promotion again with 92 points and a plus-33 goal differential.
Except, Wrexham don't want to pull an Ipswich. They said as much to ESPN's Joey Lynch during their tour of Australia this past month.
"I have no doubt we can arrive at Premier League at some point," Wrexham CEO Michael Williamson said, "but what I want to make sure is that we're future-proofing so that when we arrive there, we're able to stay there and that we don't just come falling crashing back down like you've seen other clubs do."
In the Premier League this past season, Ipswich won four games, ended the season with a minus-46 goal differential and finished 19th.
Why is the Championship so different?
Since the league itself is relatively popular and one good-to-great season puts you in the Premier League, Championship clubs both have way more money to spend than League One clubs and they spend a higher proportion of their money than any other league in the world.
For the 2023-24 season, per data from Kieron O'Connor's Swiss Ramble, Premier League clubs made �317.5 million on average, while Championship clubs took in �39.9 million and League One teams reported revenues of �9.4 million. For the same season, Premier League clubs spent �289.5 million on transfer fees and wages, Championship clubs clocked in at �48 million and League One clubs spent �9.8 million.
What that means is that Premier League teams spent 95% of what they made and League One teams were essentially putting all their revenue (101%) back into wages. With a handful of Premier League teams not really at risk of relegation but also not in contention for a title, it makes some financial sense that not everyone is maxing out their competitive spending. In League One, everyone is trying to avoid relegation and eventually get promoted, so a little more money gets poured back into player costs.
Well, in the Championship, spending on wages and transfer fees made up a whopping 121% of revenue. With an average revenue increase of nearly �280 million between the top-flight and second-tier teams, clubs are not trying to make year-on-year profits in the Championship. They're doing whatever it takes to get promoted, season after season. And the promotion structure -- with two clubs automatically going up and the next four in the table fighting it out in a playoff -- makes it so more than half of the clubs in the league can convince themselves that they're just a season away from the Premier League.
On top of all that, the finances in the Championship are way more unequal than they are in League One. Since teams relegated from the Premier League get a succession of parachute payments in the years following their demotion, the teams at the top of the Championship can carry way more expensive rosters than the just-promoted clubs down at the bottom.
In 2023-24, the highest revenue recorded by a Championship club was �127.6 million and the lowest was �16.6 million. In League One, the difference was between �21.3 million and �5.8 million. It's a similar story with wage spending. In the Championship, the high was �107 million and the low was �12.9 million. In League One, the difference was between �22 million and �4 million.
In the Championship, then, the biggest payroll is more than eight times more expensive than the smallest wage bill. In League One, it's an increase of about five and a half.
So, what does it mean for Wrexham and the Premier League?
It will be a while until we have access to Wrexham's true finances for this upcoming season, but multiple studies have found that the crowd-sourced transfer valuations at Transfermarkt serve as a very accurate proxy for a team's wage bill. And that, in turn, is a rough proxy for a team's talent level.
So far this summer, Wrexham have signed eight players for fees totaling to an estimated 12.8 million. Among them: former England international Conor Coady, former Premier League striker Kieffer Moore, former Liverpool goalkeeper Danny Ward and former Premier League midfielder Lewis O'Brien.
Since June 1 -- when the transfer window briefly opened for two weeks -- the transfer value for Wrexham's squad has increased by 110.3%, the second-highest mark in the league.
The result of more than doubling the value of their squad in just two months? Wrexham currently have the 21st-most valuable roster in a league with 24 teams.
Their team is worth 28.7 million. The Championship average club has a roster valued at 70.8 million. The most valuable roster, Leicester City, is worth 208.1 million, while the other two clubs just relegated from the Premier League, Southampton and Ipswich Town, have rosters valued at more than 180 million.
The reality is that Wrexham's roster isn't close to seriously competing for promotion. Of course, this is soccer, and weird stuff happens every season. It's a lot easier to bounce up to sixth than first, and once you're in the promotion playoff, anything can happen. But we just haven't seen this club outsmart its opponents and be efficient with its spending yet. Wrexham have been one of the richest teams with one of the most expensive rosters in every other league in which they've competed.
In fact, the only team we've seen them be at a significant financial disadvantage to was Birmingham City in League One this past season. Wrexham finished 19 points and 20 goals behind Birmingham this past season. They were closer to not getting promoted than they were to catching Birmingham and based on Transfermarkt's estimates, summer spending by Birmingham has increased their roster value by 40 million. Even with that, five other Championship teams still have more valuable squads than Birmingham and two others have similarly valuable rosters.
There's also just not a ton of room for internal improvement at Wrexham, either. Very few players are likely to get better. The average age of their current roster is 27.7 -- almost at the tail end of a soccer player's peak years from 24 to 28. They currently represent the second-oldest team in the Championship, after Derby County who finished this past season in 19th.
So, what might it all mean for this season?
Based on projections from the consultancy Twenty First Group, its simulations expect Wrexham to score 44.9 goals -- 22nd-most in the league, 9.6 fewer than league-average -- and concede 53.9 goals, good for 11th-fewest in the league and 0.6 fewer than league-average. That's what Wrexham's makeup was this past season, too: only Birmingham conceded fewer goals in League One, but seven sides scored more.
And for now, it probably is the right balance. This is an old team that's still way-too-reliant on a British and Irish player pool. To maximize its chances in the future and find a way to score more goals, the team are going to have to eventually extend their scouting search beyond a couple islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
As currently constituted, though, Wrexham are way more likely to have a successful season by leaning on the defense, rather than risking being too aggressive and ending up with the deadly combination of a bad attack and a bad defense. The latter could raise their ceiling, but the former will raise their floor.
Eliminating as much downside as possible is what they need to do. According to Twenty First Group, Wrexham have a 3.6% chance of being promoted -- and a 19% chance of being relegated.
After three successive promotions since Reynolds and Mac took over, success won't be continued upward movement. No, a successful season for Wrexham is anything that doesn't send them back down.
