Within hours of Wrexham making history to become the first team in the history of English football to achieve back-to-back-to-back promotions to the Championship, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney were already looking ahead.
Inside an empty Racecourse ground, Reynolds and McElhenney, who has since changed his name to Rob Mac, took a stroll across the pitch with each gripping a handle of the League One runners-up trophy.
‘Well, that’s three,’ Mac said. ‘Could go for four? It’ll be pricey…’
It was a conversation that came with smiles and a chuckle or two. With the New York-based Allyn family – who sold their hospital business for £2billion a decade ago – on board as minority investors, Wrexham are putting their foot on the accelerator.
Trepidation was far from the Hollywood pair’s thinking. Privately the actors had made it clear that they were ready to be aggressive in the transfer market. It’s understood an early figure for a transfer budget presented to Phil Parkinson was in the region of £20million.
That figure soon made its way around agent circles and Parkinson and senior Wrexham executives quickly found themselves being offered players from all corners of the globe.
Within hours of gaining promotion (again), Wrexham owners Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds were already planning their Premier League push
Manager Phil Parkinson has been given an eye-watering £20million budget this summer
Wrexham’s expected starting line-up for this season (right) compared to last year in League One, with new signings in capitals
So far, £11.1m of that budget has been spent, with Kieffer Moore’s £2m move from Sheffield United confirmed on Tuesday – and that’s all with a club record £7.5m deal for Nathan Broadhead of Ipswich Town still on the agenda.
‘It feels a bit chaotic, with agents running the show to an extent,’ one intermediary told Mail Sport at the start of the window. But what wasn’t chaotic or disjointed was the level of ambition Wrexham were making known to agents and executives that they were ready to show.
An approach was made to free agent Christian Eriksen within weeks of his £150,000-a-week Manchester United deal expiring. Sources close to that deal, which never came to pass, explain how Wrexham CEO Michael Williamson presented the club’s bold two-year plan to reach the Premier League.
It was an attractive pitch that impressed Eriksen and while he respectfully knocked back the chance as he holds out for a top-flight move, the knock-on effect of approaching Eriksen, a Champions League veteran and 144-cap Denmark international, quickly got around.
As one intermediary put it, it changed the perspective externally of just who could actually be attainable for Wrexham this summer.
‘Wrexham are really upgrading everything both on and off the field and it is a hugely impressive project, as you can see from the presence of people like Michael there,’ Eriksen’s representative Martin Schoots told Mail Sport.
The Eriksen approach certainly caught the attention of Conor Coady, the seventh of eight signings this summer for the club.
Within a week of Wrexham firming up their interest in the former England international at the end of July, Coady was stood inside Reynolds and Mac’s stadium box modelling Wrexham’s three kits for the 2025-26 season. Within 24 hours of putting pen to paper, Coady was on a plane to the Netherlands for a friendly against FC Groningen.
Former England defender Conor Coady was the seventh of Wrexham’s eight signings so far this summer
Part of Wrexham’s modus operandi was to cast the net further afield. Prior to this summer, the only signing they had made outside of the UK in the Parkinson era was third-choice goalkeeper Luke McNicholas, from Sligo Rovers.
Parkinson has stayed in touch with a number of Dutch agents, while Wrexham have looked at players in Argentina, Australia, Croatia, Italy, Scandinavia and Spain.
Some of those being targeted – some even offered up by agents – were players that spent last season playing in the Champions League.
Background checks on players were being done ten to the dozen while there was a degree of frustration, as one source put it, at a ‘Wrexham Tax’ being placed on certain targets by clubs.
From the outside looking in the start of the window felt disjointed with so much work to do on a squad that, by his own admission, Parkinson admitted needed a lot of amendments to be ready for the Championship grind.
Wrexham headed off for their pre-season tour of Australia and New Zealand – itself a sign of how global a Championship club with a 10,000-seater stadium can be – with just two new faces through the door in Ryan Hardie and Danny Ward, a Wrexham fan who was at the club as a youngster.
It meant that between Parkinson, Williamson and non-executive director Shaun Harvey, their work Down Under involved numerous late-night calls and email chains. Parkinson and Williamson both spoke about routine 2am and 3am finishes to their days in a bid to land their transfer targets.
One of the first areas Parkinson was eager to address was going forward. Wrexham were joint-second lowest scorers in the top 10 in League One last season and despite the January arrivals of former England, Burnley and Southampton striker Jay Rodriguez, who is currently injured and in a protective boot, and Sam Smith, who had to have a benign tumour removed from his calf this summer, more was going to be needed.
Jay Rodriguez was brought in in January to add firepowe, but is now injured
Wrexham have been promoted three seasons in a row – can they make it four?
Factor in too that Paul Mullin, the poster boy of Wrexham’s rise since the Hollywood takeover and a player who has scored more than 100 goals in North Wales, was shipped out on loan to Wigan Athletic. Parkinson underlined that sentiment would play no part in a prospective rise to the top flight.
Ollie Palmer, a game-changing January buy in Parkinson’s very first season in charge, was told to leave the club on loan in January but rejected the opportunity to do so. He is another that, while popular with fans across the globe for helping lift Wrexham from the fifth tier to the second, is surplus to requirements.
Other stars from their non-league rise include Mark Howard, who has since left for Salford City, Jacob Mendy, who has been told he can see out the final year of his contract on loan, and Elliot Lee, who has fallen out of favour and could be allowed to move before the window closes.
All of that meant signings to bolster attacking areas was a primary focus for Parkinson. Hardie, who Wrexham missed out in January, was Parkinson’s first target following his relegation with Plymouth Argyle. A £750,000 move was swiftly struck.
Multiple figures close to the club spoke of nine being the magic number of signings and four days out from facing Southampton – Wrexham’s first game in the second tier in 43 years – they only have one to go to hit that target.
While Hardie was signing No 1, Sheffield United and Wales striker Moore arrives as signing No 8. Moore is the prototypical big man that Parkinson has had a penchant for no matter the level he has managed at.
Parkinson had Jon Stead during his time at Bradford City, brought in Palmer to play the big man role to get Wrexham out of the National League, and now sees Moore as an integral piece of the puzzle to guide Wrexham into the Premier League, as the 32-year-old did with Bournemouth and Ipswich.
It quickly became apparent that Wrexham would need to spend big this summer to compete and they have shattered their transfer record twice already.
Wrexham hope Kieffer Moore’s goals can take them into the promised land
First saw wing back Liberato Cacace swap Serie A for the Championship as he joined in a deal worth an initial £2.16m, before that figure was beaten by the £3m signing of midfielder Lewis O’Brien from Nottingham Forest.
But that doesn’t mean it has all gone Wrexham’s way during this major face-lift.
An ambitious move for Broadhead was agreed in principle last week, but Mail Sport understands Ipswich boss Kieran McKenna has yet to give the green light for the Welshman go.
Barnsley’s Davis Keillor-Dunn, one of the standout players in League One last summer, has been a Parkinson target all summer long and is seen as an alternative if the Broadhead deal collapses.
Liverpool youngster Owen Beck was another target on loan, only for him to choose Derby County and his old boss John Eustace.
There has long been a feeling at Wrexham that they have been playing catch-up to ready themselves for becoming a Premier League entity.
Sweeping changes on the pitch this summer – which also included beating more than 10 Championship rivals to the free agent signing of Josh Windass – began to bridge the gap, while off the pitch the stadium is getting its own makeover.
A new £1.7m hybrid pitch, with undersoil heating, has been installed to meet FIFA and UEFA requirements. It is the same pitch style used at Milan’s San Siro.
Wrexham have agreed a deal for Wales star Nathan Broadhead, but his manager Kieran McKenna still needs to sign off on Ipswich letting him go
Wrexham beat more than 10 of their divisional rivals to the signing of Josh Windass on a free transfer
Elsewhere, the club have introduced a new hospitality venture known as the Dug Out Club, with fans able to sit in the same seats used by players and management this season for £45 a head.
Work is ongoing ahead of the anticipated opening of a new 7,750-capacity Kop stand for the 2026-27 season that will take the total capacity to 18,000, making it bigger than the grounds of Premier League sides AFC Bournemouth and Brentford.
When Reynolds and Mac presented themselves to the media after purchasing the club in 2021, and vocalised their dream of taking Wrexham from the National League to the Premier League, the response by and large was to patronisingly snigger back.
Three straight promotions later, and with no sign of stopping, nobody is laughing now.
