Wrexham's Premier League promotion dream is ON: Eight-match unbeaten run has Red Dragons dreaming of the big time after slow start

The Championship is a notoriously competitive and unforgiving league. More than half of the 30 teams promoted to England's second tier over the past 10 years have gone back down inside two seasons.

So, while Hollywood duo Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds had pumped millions into the club since taking over in 2021, they were acutely aware that even greater investment would be required just to survive in the Championship, resulting in a record-breaking outlay of £40 million ($53m) on 13 players.

Wrexham's net spend raised eyebrows - and expectations - but chief executive Michael Williamson was at pains to point out that there were mitigating circumstances on account of their unique situation.

"[The net spend was high] because it wasn't offset by any player sales - unlike a club who's in the Championship already or a club that's been in the Premier League that gets relegated to the Championship," he told The Leader. "They're able to do that kind of squad change as a result of being able to sell players along the way. Or they rely on their academy players and they sell their academy players to fund some of the transfer market.

"We don't have the foundations for that within the academy, that pipeline of players, and we had three consecutive promotions, so we had to invest in the squad to be competitive."

Nonetheless, it initially looked like a case of too much, too soon for Wrexham, who struggled to keep clean sheets and, consequently, win games during the first two months of the season.

However, after a disappointing 1-0 defeat at Stoke City on October 18 that left the Red Dragons 18th in the Championship standings, they've now risen to 10th on the back of an eight-game undefeated run featuring five shut-outs. Indeed, Andri Gudjohnsen's early strike in Saturday's 1-1 draw with Blackburn Rovers at the Racehorse Ground was the first goal Wrexham had conceded in 375 minutes of league football.

For Parkinson, the improved defensive record was all down to his players understanding the importance of the fundamentals in football, revealing that he'd used struggling Liverpool as a case in point while addressing his team before last week's win over Bristol City.

"I was listening to Virgil van Dijk's interview after the Nottingham Forest defeat," the 58-year-old Englishman explained, "and he was speaking about how Liverpool have got to win the first and second balls, be competitive, work as a team and how they've got to get their way back by doing the basics in football. And that's the champions of England talking like that!

"But we had spoken about the same things early in the season: football is about making sure you're threatening at one end but also secure when you're attacking, and I think we've got a lot better at that as the season has gone on."

Parkinson also feels that Max Cleworth's 95th-minute equaliser in Saturday's draw with Blackburn proves that Wrexham have recovered the relentlessness and never-say-die attitude that characterised their astounding ascent to the Championship.

"It's good for the lads who have come and joined us to see that we keep going right until the end here," Parkinson enthused after his 200th game in charge of the Welsh outfit. "Time and time again, we've scored late equalisers or winners, and we've done it again today. The crowd could sense a goal was coming, too."

The belief is certainly back among the fans, who, Parkinson feels, are feeding off the increase in energy they're seeing on the pitch.

"I think the atmosphere now and the feeling in the stadium is what we were used to in previous years," he said. "In those early games this season, we didn't quite create that intensity in our play. We had some really good periods in all those games but we got punished in key moments.

"But we've always spoken about making this place difficult for the opposition to play and I think we've got it back where we need it to be. We've got to keep it there now and that comes with the supporters obviously playing their part, but also the manner of the performance, the physicality."

The home form has certainly been integral to Wrexham's revival. They've not lost a league game at the Racecourse Ground since that defeat to QPR, while they're still the only team to have beaten runaway Championship leaders Coventry City so far this season. 

"As a team, it probably took a little bit of time to gel and that happens with the amount of changes that were made in the summer and you lose players and new lads come in," Cleworth said. "It's hard to gel straight away, but I think we're certainly doing that now. We've tightened things up and we're really dangerous going forward.

"And it's massive for us, that home form and having the fans behind us week-in week-out when we play. I think if we can keep that fiery atmosphere going, it's hard for teams to come here and get anything.

"No matter who plays, lads who come off the bench, we've got quality all over the pitch so we're always a threat to teams and it's important that we've managed to get on a decent run. Hopefully we can continue it and with a few more runs like this, we could be potentially fighting for promotion."

It's certainly possible at this point of the season.

As it stands, Wrexham are just three points off sixth-placed Bristol City in the final play-off spot, and are going into massive games against Preston North End (fifth) and Hull City (ninth) high on confidence.

Encouragingly, Cleworth says the players are keeping their feet on the ground. "The Championship's infamous for anyone beating anyone," the academy product acknowledged. "So, we won't get carried away with ourselves. It only takes a few losses in this league to bring you straight back to reality, so we'll just focus on the next game and then the game after that and see where we end up."

It's also worth pointing out that the Championship is a long, hard slog and we're only 18 games into a 46-game season, so there really is a long way to go. Wrexham are undoubtedly improving, though, while Williamson says their primary aim for the 2025-26 campaign has already been achieved.

"The objective was to be competitive and to show that we could go toe-to-toe with any club in the Championship and so far this season, that's what you've seen," the former Inter director said. "I actually think we could definitely be higher in the table than we are today, but the important part is that we've shown that it doesn't matter which club we're playing against in this league, we can take on anyone and come out on top.

"From my perspective now, the question is: how do we build on and off the pitch to prepare ourselves for when we do arrive in the Premier League? Ultimately, that's our objective, and I think everyone is clear on that by now."

It has been argued that Wrexham would be better off missing out on promotion this season, that they'd benefit from another year in the Championship, as it would essentially allow the rest of the club to catch up with the remarkably rapid progress being made by the players on the pitch.

As former Liverpool chief executive officer Peter Moore, who provides strategic guidance to the Wrexham board, recently told the World Football Summit in Madrid: "There is a risk [of growing too fast] in that you have to keep up financially and the stadium is too small. If you're going to keep up economically, your gameday revenues are critical and a 12,000 capacity doesn't cut it."

Work is already under way on the construction of a new, all-seater Kop stand and could be completed next year, but it feels significant that McElhenney is not putting Parkinson under pressure to secure promotion as soon as possible, insisting that both and Reynolds are still thinking long-term.

"We don't want to build something that's unsustainable," the American said. "As glorious as it might be to be promoted to the Premier League, it would be equally as tragic to be relegated again, because that can very quickly create that spiral downwards.

"Is the ultimate goal the Premier League? Yes, of course. Is it winning the Premier League? Yes, of course. But that actually isn't the number one goal. The number one goal is building something for the next generation and leaving something behind that is sustainable for the rest of its existence.

"So, we're going to do it [reach the Premier League] in the same way that we've been doing it from day one, which is asking the town. I sort of jumped the gun early on and just assumed that that's what the people of the town wanted for their club, and that that wasn't necessarily the case. I had a lot of very long conversations with people that said, 'Well, we might not be ready for that. The town might not be ready for that and the club might not be ready for that.'

"We have to make sure that we're always checking in with the community to make sure that this is what they want. But it was a crazy pipe dream four or five years ago where we got laughed at by the media and by the world, but I don't think anybody's laughing anymore."

Indeed, two of Hollywood's most famous funnymen are deadly serious about getting Wrexham into the Premier League - and it arguably doesn't matter if they realise that goal this season or not. What's clearly most important to McElhenney and Reynolds is that when they do reach the peak of professional football in England, they're sufficiently equipped to stay there.