Wrexham: three straight promotions and a Hollywood owner

In 2019/20 Wrexham finished nineteenth in the National League, the fifth tier of English football. It is the lowest position in more than a hundred and fifty years of the club's history. Six years later they are in the Championship, one rung below the Premier League, and along the way they have done something no other English club had managed.

Fifteen years outside

Wrexham dropped out of the Football League in 2008, after eighty-seven unbroken years inside it. And they stayed out for fifteen seasons, from 2008/09 to 2022/23. That is not a footnote: it is a whole generation of supporters who grew up never seeing their club in professional football.

In February 2021 two American actors — Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney — completed a takeover. Members of the Wrexham Supporters Trust had approved it the previous November with 98.6% in favour. The press put the deal at around two million pounds, though the club never confirmed a figure.

On 1 July 2021 Phil Parkinson arrived as manager on a rolling twelve-month contract. Five years later he is still there, with three promotions behind him.

111 points, and it was still close

The first promotion was the hardest, because only one club goes up automatically from the National League. In 2022/23 Wrexham finished on 111 points: thirty-four wins, nine draws and three defeats from forty-six games, with 116 goals scored. It was a record total for the top five tiers of English football.

And they won by four. Notts County finished on 107, also losing only three matches all season. That 107 would have won the division in any other year; instead it meant second place and the play-offs. Wrexham sealed the title on 22 April 2023, beating Boreham Wood 3-1 at the Racecourse.

The next two came back to back: second in League Two in 2023/24 on 88 points, confirmed on 13 April with a 6-0 win over Forest Green, and second in League One in 2024/25 on 92, sealed on 26 April with a 3-0 win over Charlton. That year the champions were Birmingham on 111 points — exactly the figure Wrexham had posted two seasons earlier.

Three consecutive promotions. No club had done it before in the top five tiers of English football.

Two names that explain the run

Paul Mullin scored 47 goals in all competitions in 2022/23, 38 of them in the league. He left by mutual consent in June 2026 with 110 goals in 172 appearances and three consecutive Player of the Season awards.

And there is Ben Foster, an international goalkeeper who had retired and came back in March 2023 to help out. On Easter Monday, 10 April, Wrexham were beating Notts County 3-2 — their direct rivals for the title — when a penalty was given in the 97th minute. Foster saved it low to his right. He had turned forty the week before, and said it was the first last-minute penalty save of his career.

The cups, and the ceiling

In January 2023, still a fifth-tier club, Wrexham won 4-3 away at Coventry in the FA Cup third round. They then drew 3-3 at home with Sheffield United and lost the replay 3-1 at Bramall Lane, to two home goals in the fourth and sixth minutes of stoppage time.

On 9 January 2026 they did it again, by then a Championship club: 3-3 with Nottingham Forest and 4-3 on penalties. It was their first win over top-flight opposition in twenty-six years.

The 2025/26 season ended in the highest league finish in their entire history: seventh in the Championship on 71 points. They missed the play-offs by two, after drawing 2-2 at home with Middlesbrough on the final day while Hull won. And there is an irony that stings: the EFL has expanded the play-offs from four clubs to six from 2026/27. A year later, that seventh place would have been enough.

"No club had ever won three successive promotions in the top five tiers of English football. Wrexham did it coming out of fifteen years in exile."

One episode from that run is worth telling because it shows how strange the club's new life had become. On 26 July 2023, twelve minutes into a pre-season friendly against Manchester United in San Diego, Paul Mullin collided with goalkeeper Nathan Bishop and suffered a punctured lung. Wrexham called it a reckless challenge, Bishop apologised publicly, and Reynolds offered Mullin his house in California to recover in. A fourth-tier club had gone from fifteen years of non-league obscurity to injuring its top scorer against Manchester United on a summer tour of the United States.

One thing about the documentary is worth correcting, because it gets repeated wrongly: the club earns nothing directly from the series. What it has gained is exposure, and that does show up in the accounts: turnover of £26.7m in the 2023/24 financial year, more than double the previous one.

• Simulate all 46 Championship matchdays and build the full table.
• Fill in the new six-team play-off bracket all the way to Wembley.
• Change any result and watch the table rearrange.
• See how often a newly promoted club goes straight back up again.

"Open the Championship simulator and decide how far Wrexham go."