The Rise of Wrexham Part 2: Ascending the Ladder

I had honestly expected League Two to be tough. After all, reaching League Two is seen as a massive achievement for non-league clubs, often greeted with chants of ‘we’re in FIFA’! That’s quite enough talk about the other football game franchise, though. League Two, for Wrexham and Karl Bootlegger, kicked off as soon as we’d secured promotion - it was time for us to rebuild our squad, bring in new faces and say goodbye to some old ones that aren’t quite up to League Two standard. Our first sale was Callum McFadzean - in truth, I’d have liked to have kept him around but Scotland’s Ross County, perhaps most famous for hailing from the Highlands and playing Scottish Premiership football in the cosy surroundings of Victoria Park (capacity 6000), offered us £110K, and that was an offer we couldn’t refuse. Next to be sold was Layton Ndukwu, who had been a star for us in non-league football, but didn’t look to have that much long-term potential. Burton poached him from us for £105K, with him heading off to the Pirelli to enjoy the terrifying hospitality of Billy and Betty Brewer.

While it was sad to say farewell to Callum and Layton, our new signings were instantly ready to make an impact. Our first key signing was Cain Harries, who plies his trade at Swindon Town in the real world. We picked him up for a handy £100K from Bristol Rovers, who had been relegated from League One the season before. We also signed a new keeper to help us cope with the step up to somewhat competent finishers that comes with League Two football, Liam Roberts, who joined us from Northampton Town. With that business done, we rolled into the 2022/23 season with some quite considerable debt that was taken care of with a cash injection from Ryan Reynolds, presumably from Detective Pikachu 2, leading to the fans dubbing Wrexham as a team ‘powered by Pikachu’. We signed a large number of other players in a flurry of additional transfer activity around the beginning of the season, notably Joe Sbarra of Solihull Moors, a player who had caused us a lot of trouble the season before, and Tyrese Fornah, a defensive midfielder par excellence from Nottingham Forest on a free. We also managed to secure a senior affiliate in the shape of Blackburn Rovers, who we could loan players from with far greater ease, tempting them across the border with promises of laverbread and Welsh cakes.

After some friendlies against teams as diverse as Doncaster, Liverpool and Cefn Druids, our season kicked off proper with a Carabao Cup first round match against Gillingham, a League One team. A proper test, we thought. Oh, hang on, we’ve beaten them 1-0, with a 90th-minute penalty from returning loanee Rodel Richards the decider, sending opposition fans on the long drive back to Kent wearing hangdog expressions. Our good luck continued in our first league match, a home game against somewhat local opposition in the shape of Tranmere, best known for being celebrity referee Mike Dean’s team of choice. We came away with a 2-0 win thanks to a brace from Ollie Palmer, Wrexham’s number 9. Next up, we faced some stiff competition in the second round of the Carabao Cup, which drew us against Championship side Norwich. We didn’t have high hopes going in, I’ll be honest. Karl Bootlegger was, at this point, still studying for the top coaching qualification and we were up against a team that’s regularly in the Premier League. I didn’t need to fear, as it turns out. We came away from Carrow Road with a 2-1 win! After this, our form continued unabated until the 7th of September, when we lost 0-1 to Tottenham Hotspur in the third round of the Carabao. Not a bad run, all things considered, and nobody could say we were hammered. Meanwhile, league success continued until the 29th of October, where, after 11 wins and three draws, we lost our first league match 0-1 to Crawley. The losses came a little more often after this, likely due to a dip in morale. After not losing for nearly three months, we then started to lose once or twice a month, with the other losses in 2022 coming at the hands of Mansfield and Morecambe. The rest of our 2022 football was going well: in the FA Cup, we saw off Salford and Wycombe, bringing us to the third round and the promise of juicy TV rights money, while in the Papa John’s Trophy, we won our group and beat Crewe in the first knockout round.

Our next highlight came on a cold and wet January evening when a capacity crowd of 11,500 fans crammed into the Racecourse Ground for an FA Cup Third Round match against West Ham. The TV money had given our coffers a boost and, frankly, I wasn’t expecting much, other than a good show for the fans. But this is the FA Cup, a magical tournament where upsets are guaranteed. We opened the scoring within three minutes, with Thomas O’Connor scoring a blinder of a goal that scorched past the keeper. Only 31 minutes later, we got another, Rodel Richards had scored again! Squeaky bum time commenced at the 74th minute where Pedro showed us why he earns the big bucks by scoring a silky-smooth goal against us, but we were able to hold out for the win. As chants of Karl Bootlegger’s name filled the stands and the streets of Wrexham, we began to dream, albeit privately, of a cup win.

Prior to West Ham’s big day out, we had beaten Fleetwood in the second knockout round of the Papa John’s Trophy. Morale was high, giving the whole of Wrexham a spring in its step. Even two losses in one month, previously unheard of for the Red Dragons, couldn’t sap our morale. We smashed the Burnley Under 23s in the Papa John’s quarter-final before destroying Sutton 6-1 at home. The Racecourse Ground had, by this point, acquired the reputation of a fortress, somewhere the other League Two teams wanted to avoid at all costs. The whims of the fixture list wouldn’t allow that, though, so week after week we sent teams back with their tail between their legs. As February rolled into town, Bristol City paid us a visit. Another Championship club, we were somewhat wary but not too afraid - we’d just beaten a Premier League team, so how hard could it be? Well, as it turns out…really hard. Despite our home advantage, we were by far the weaker team for most of the match, with City getting shots on target minute after minute, causing at least a couple of hundred fans to leave early, fearing the worst. You can only imagine the feelings those fans must have had, as, walking out of the ground, they heard that telltale roar. Joe Sbarra had got a last-minute winner, smashing one into the onion bag in the 87th minute. Next up, we faced Swindon Town, a fairly dull game that we won 1-0 at home. After that, we had the Papa John’s semi-final against League One’s Peterborough. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t edge the match, and Joel Randall scored a last-minute winner against us in the 86th minute. Now we knew how those Bristol City fans had felt. We were out, but proud of ourselves. After an aggressive match against West Brom in the fifth round of the FA Cup, with cards flying thick and fast, we were out of that cup too. While those beautiful dreams we’d had were shattered, it was time to focus on the league.

From March to May, we didn’t lose a single league game and we lifted the league trophy on the final day with a whopping 104 points. Of the 46 games we had played, we won a ridiculous 32, and we’d secured a positive goal difference of 60 goals to boot. We were all, frankly, staggered - the board had expected us to ‘fight bravely against relegation’, whatever that means, but we had exceeded all expectations. Not only had we won the league, we had won it in style.

League One

Another promotion later, we were now only two more away from the top flight and the glory of potential European competition. After the previous season, we were on a high: if we smashed League Two, why couldn’t we do the same in League One? Anything seemed possible. The transfer window brought with it the usual flurry of activity that Wrexham had become accustomed to. As soon as the season ended, we welcomed someone new: Jordan Obita. Obita joined us from Nottingham Forest after a so-so season and promised real quality at left-back. The first player to leave (and, indeed, the only player to leave until January, was Janoi Donacien. While he’d served us well in League Two, he didn’t seem to work with our League One tactic, so we loaned him out to Grimsby, with a future fee of £26.5K. After this, we signed Jake Young, a promising young striker from Forest Green Rovers, the stalwart central defender that is Ciaron Brown, from Coventry, and Nik Tzanev, a Kiwi keeper who was, frankly, better than we deserved, signed from AFC Wimbledon.

To bring in a bit of extra money, our first match was a friendly against Crystal Palace, attended by 4252 fans, who witnessed an incredibly dull 0-0. After this, we did a mini-tour of Wales, playing Connah’s Quay, Llandudno and Lex Glyndwr XI (our Wrexham brethren). After this, we got our arses kicked by Derby and Liverpool in two more home friendlies, which was a bit of a fly in the ointment. There was no time for self-pity, though, the season was about to kick off! Our opening game was away at Accrington Stanley, a team most well-known today for being mentioned in a milk advert. While not exactly a local derby, there’s only a modest 75 miles between Wrexham and Accrington, which meant that over a quarter of the fans in attendance were Red Dragons fans. What a game it was that awaited them on a roasting August afternoon: Wrexham smashed in four goals, with Accrington barely getting a single shot on target. Jake Young, our new signing, secured a hat trick on his debut, with the other goal coming care of Liam Kelly. Our next game was another battle against Mike Dean’s army, Tranmere, in the Carabao Cup, which finished 1-0 in our favour.

The results continued to come but it was noticeably tougher than the National League or League Two had been. We went through patchier runs, with our first two losses coming care of Preston North End, late of the Championship, and Forest Green. We were starting to draw a lot more often too. The worst run of form came in December, when it looked like we might not be getting to the Premiership as quickly as we’d hoped. Out of (a frankly outrageous) nine games, we only managed to win three, losing four and drawing two. While it was far from a season of good cheer, the January transfer window and our still-newfound wealth began to exchange flirtatious glances.

First to join us, on New Year’s Day was a central attacking midfielder, Will Keane, who we hoped would help improve our goal difference. Later that same day, the Racecourse Ground played host to Sheffield Wednesday, with Keane scoring the sole goal in the game on his debut. The fans were already chanting his name, and we were one step closer to promotion. Unfortunately, other than this win, January’s results were largely dour: we lost to MK Dons, Plymouth, Wolves (in the FA Cup third round) and Burton. A trio of wins was completed by victory against Lincoln and Peterborough. Something clearly wasn’t working. However, the transfer window wasn’t shut yet and the last few days of January brought a huge flurry of activity. The hot young prospect Herbie Kane came in from Barnsley, who would strengthen our midfield along with our other new signing Robbie McKenzie from Gillingham. As they often do, the showstopper signing came on that day of dildos in ears: deadline day. We’d had our eyes on the splendidly-named Zeno Ibsen Rossi, a spectacular young defender at Bournemouth. We’d fought hard throughout the window to bring him to the club, essentially fighting off other interested clubs (including some in the Championship) with a sharpened stick. We finally sealed the deal on deadline day with just a handful of hours to go. With a whopping price tag of £375K, Rossi was one of the most expensive players who we had ever bought.

With these new signings and some more quality at the back, it was time for us to try a new tactic and course correct before we crumbled into mid-table irrelevance. If you’re not familiar with football tactics, you may not be aware of the gegenpress. This tactic, meaning ‘counter-pressing’ in German, is a tactic that focuses on regaining possession as soon as it's lost and going right back on the attack. With the smoothness of a racecar gearbox, we shifted into a 4-3-3 gegenpress, with two wingers working as inside forwards. The results started coming immediately. In February, our first month using the new tactic, we won three out of five games, with our only loss coming at the hands of bitter rivals Cardiff, at the Racecourse Ground no less. Despite this stinging defeat, we were starting to show the improvement we needed. From the 28th of February to the 4th of May, we won all but one game, a 2-2 draw away at promotion rivals Derby. This draw was enough to secure promotion, however: we had done it! Another season and another promotion, with the final day of the season boasting a 1-2 win away at Cheltenham, Wrexham chants could be heard from Denbighshire to Gloucestershire. For 1269 away fans, and thousands more across the UK, it was a celebration they’d never forget: Wrexham was really back in business.