Wrexham in the Premier League is no longer a pipe dream: Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney-owned Red Dragons can show they're ready for the big time by taking down Chelsea in FA Cup

To take a club from the fifth tier to the second, you need to recruit extremely well. It's not enough to have some decent buys here and there, you have to be nailing most of your business if you're actually going to achieve multiple promotions in a row.

The Championship's reputation as one of the most entertaining leagues in European football, and one now that has financial muscle to flex too, has opened up more doors for Wrexham. They were already a draw in League Two and League One given their new-found global fame and Hollywood backing, but moving to within one season of the Premier League is a different prospect on a sporting level altogether.

Wrexham absolutely killed their summer 2025 transfer business, and it's among the top reasons why they're in with a shout of fourth-straight promotion. The most successful deal has been the £2 million ($2.7m) they paid to sign Wales international striker Kieffer Moore from Sheffield United. Although he's now 33 and won't have much, if any, re-sale value, Moore is a vastly experienced and proven Championship forward who guarantees goals so long as he receives appropriate service. He is Wrexham's top scorer this season with 13 goals, 11 of which have come in the league.

In fact, all three of Wrexham's highest scorers this term - Moore, Josh Windass (10) and Nathan Broadhead (seven) - were summer arrivals. Their top six, extending to Ollie Rathbone (seven), Sam Smith (six) and Lewis O'Brien (four), were purchased during or after the summer of 2024.

Elsewhere, defensive midfielder Ben Sheaf and versatile centre-back Callum Doyle are among the top appearance-makers since joining towards the back end of the summer 2025 window, while their only signing from abroad, New Zealand international Liberato Cacace from Italian side Empoli, scored during their FA Cup win over Premier League and Europa League side Nottingham Forest.

Recruitment works two ways, however. Wrexham have had to be ruthless with some of their fan-favourites over the last year, realising they need to shift players who don't contribute enough to make way for those who can.

In January, the club waved goodbye to captain James McClean, who returned home to play for boyhood side Derry City in the League of Ireland. He at least stayed on into this season and made 16 Championship appearances before departing.

But the same cannot be said of Paul Mullin, the Scouse striker who dropped down two divisions to join Wrexham when they were still a National League club in 2021. He was one of the first marquee signings of the Reynolds-McElhenney era, and the A-list pair loved Mullin so much he made a cameo appearance in the former's Deadpool franchise in 2024 as 'Welshpool'.

In his first three seasons for Wrexham, Mullin scored a whopping 105 times, firing the Red Dragons into League One. Once they got to the third tier, however, the goals dried up, finding the net only three times in 26 matches as Parkinson's men finished second. This was partly put down to undergoing what was described as 'minor' back surgery before the start of the 2024-25 campaign.

Last summer, Mullin was told to find a new club, bringing an end to his fairy-tale story in north Wales. He remained in League One with a loan to Wigan Athletic, though that was terminated in January and he joined Bradford City on loan for the rest of the season instead.

Mullin has spoken about the disappointment of how his Wrexham career petered out. Last month, he said: "It's something I've found quite challenging over the last 18 months. It was sort out of the blue, after obviously everything that I've done and then getting surgery. It sort of ended from there really, which was difficult to take but that's football you know. It's something that I'm never going to, what's the word, probably never going to 'accept' it because of what happened. It was something I found quite tough, as I say, but that's football, you move on."

To temper expectations over the Premier League dream, Wrexham were constantly told in pre-season that the gap between League One and the Championship is the widest in terms of quality when compared with the divisions they had already conquered. They wouldn't be able to just show up, pick the same players, employ the same tactics and hope for success.

Indeed, prospects did look bleak for Wrexham at the start of the campaign. On the opening weekend of the season, they conceded twice in second-half stoppage time to lose 2-1 at Southampton and won only two of their first 10 matches, leaving them 18th in the table.

Since picking up win number three - a 1-0 victory at home to Oxford United with 10 men - Wrexham have lost just four of their 25 Championship games. In that timeframe, they have been playing at an 81-point pace across a full season, which is a total usually more than enough to get into the play-offs and on some occasions can secure automatic promotion.

There have, of course, been some picture-book moments across this run. Goals in the 93rd and 94th minute saw Wrexham come from behind to beat Queens Park Rangers 3-2 in January and they edged promotion rivals Ipswich Town 5-3 in an eight-goal thriller last month. These are the sort of checkpoints a team on their way to glory often hits.

Wrexham are a football club in a unique situation. They don't really have rivalries with their fellow Welsh sides, even despite returning to the same division as Swansea City, who have onboarded Snoop Dogg as an investor, to draw another parallel between the two teams. Instead, most of the Red Dragons' enemies lie on the other side of the border, with Chester their most-hated foes.

That means Wrexham have long been the only professional team in their catchment area. During the seventies, eighties and nineties, they competed in the European Cup Winners' Cup whenever they lifted the Welsh Cup, during the time when they could compete in that as well as England's FA Cup. The Racecourse Ground has a record of averaging five-figure attendances all the way back to the 1940s while the club were in the old Division Three North. Wales is a rugby country, but Wrexham is a football town.

There's a school of thought that Reynolds and McElhenney have merely given back to a community that has long loved its club, even without much success.

Frank Sinclair played for Wrexham for three years shortly after they were relegated from the Football League in the naughties, and speaking in association with BetGoodwin Football Betting, told GOAL: "It's a brilliant football club. When I was there playing, it was definitely a sleeping giant. I could feel that when you're in and around the Wrexham area, you know how well the club could be supported if they started doing really well. And what the new owners have gone in and done has been incredible because what they have done is capture the imagination of the community and everybody's followed them on and off the pitch. So, it's incredible at the moment what they're doing."

Away from the madness of the Championship, Wrexham have battled their way through two rounds of the FA Cup so far. For the first time in the Reynolds-McElhenney era, they came up against Premier League opposition, taking on Nottingham Forest at home in round three. Having led 2-0 at the Racecourse Ground, Wrexham were pegged back to 2-2 before taking the lead again late on, only for Callum Hudson-Odoi to equalise three minutes from time. The tie went all the way to penalties, with goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo saving twice as the hosts won 5-3 on spot kicks.

Up next in round four were Ipswich, and Parkinson's men produced the first of two victories in eight days against the Tractor Boys to book their spot in the fifth round. They could barely have hoped for a more glamorous draw with Chelsea set to visit north Wales, and according to Hugh Jackman, that's exactly what Reynolds wanted.

Reynolds filmed himself and his 'Deadpool & Wolverine' co-star watching the draw. "Holy crap!" was the excited reaction of the Canadian actor, almost (almost) left speechless at the thought of Wrexham's first glamour fixture under his ownership.

During Wrexham's ascent, they have faced Chelsea twice as part of their first two pre-season tours of the United States. In 2023, they were the first opponents for then-Blues head coach Mauricio Pochettino, now manager of the U.S. men's national team, and a Wrexham side featuring Mullin, Ben Foster, Elliot Lee, Sam Dalby and Andy Cannon were thrashed 5-0, with Conor Gallagher, Christopher Nkunku and Ian Maatsen among the goals.

The following year, Wrexham provided the first pre-season test for Enzo Maresca as Chelsea boss. This was a far more successful venture for the Red Dragons, earning a 2-2 draw, despite the Blues being able to field international stars such as Reece James, Noni Madueke and Raheem Sterling.

But this is a different kettle of fish. This isn't pre-season, rather the business end of the season proper. Chelsea earned their first win in three games on Wednesday with a 4-1 thrashing of Aston Villa, though they may have one eye on next week's Champions League clash with Paris Saint-Germain when they visit Wales on Saturday.

Given it's widely known the Blues' priority is to ensure they're still in the Champions League next season, there's a real chance for Wrexham not just to show they can compete with Premier League sides, but cause a cup upset too.

The Racecourse Ground will certainly be rocking. This is Wrexham's moment to prove they are ready to take on the world's best. There's another chapter in this fairy tale to be written.