When Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney arrived at Wrexham in 2020, the talk was of taking a non-league club and building something special. Few people genuinely entertained the idea that the Premier League could be a realistic target within the decade. Yet here we are just six years later, with Wrexham sitting seventh in the Championship and the Championship promotion odds telling a story that would have seemed like fiction just a few years ago.
A rise few could have predicted
Wrexham’s journey up the football pyramid has been nothing short of remarkable. Three successive promotions since 2023 have taken them from the National League to the Championship, a feat that would be extraordinary for any club, let alone one that spent 15 years outside the Football League entirely.
What makes it even more impressive is the speed of it. Many assumed the Championship would be their ceiling, at least for now. The step up from League One to the second tier is significant in terms of quality, physicality, and tactical demands. Wrexham, it seems, did not get that memo.
Closer than you think
The gap between Wrexham and third is just six points at the time of writing. With Ipswich Town occupying third and outside play-off places on just goal difference, this is far from a comfortable mid-table story. This division is so tightly packed that a four or five-game winning run could completely transform the picture.
The business end of the Championship campaign is where ambitions either crystallise or collapse, and Wrexham find themselves right in the mix.
A taste of what could be
If any single moment has underlined Wrexham’s readiness to compete at a higher level, it was their FA Cup clash with Chelsea. The Welsh side pushed one of the Premier League’s biggest clubs to extra-time, eventually losing 4-2 in a game that flattered the scoreline.
Wrexham took the lead twice during the match. When Callum Doyle made it 2-1 in the 78th minute, with so little time remaining, they must have genuinely believed they had pulled off one of the great upsets. The manner of their performance, the resilience, the quality in key moments, all of it pointed to a club that is no longer simply making up the numbers.
Consistency is the missing piece
Look at the Championship odds, and Wrexham were not among the front-runners for promotion at the start of this season. A run reading W-L-W-L-W over their last five games tells a story of a side who are challenging, if not consistent. Three wins from five is not bad in isolation, but the pattern of losing the game after every win suggests a team that has not yet found the sustained momentum that promotion pushes require.
The problem with that kind of form in the Championship is that it keeps the door open for rivals. Every defeat hands points back and invites competitors back into the race. If Wrexham can break that cycle and string consecutive wins together in the run-in, the play-offs are there for the taking. If not, this season may end as a valuable lesson rather than a historic achievement.
Even if promotion does not come this season, the trajectory is impossible to ignore. A club that was playing National League football three years ago is now within touching distance of the top six in the second tier of English football. The infrastructure, the fanbase, and the financial backing are all growing in tandem with the results on the pitch.
Reynolds and McElhenney have spoken openly about their Premier League ambitions, and for the first time, those comments feel less like marketing and more like a credible roadmap. The unthinkable is becoming thinkable, and if Wrexham can find consistency in the weeks ahead, this season’s story may have one final, extraordinary chapter still to be written.
