When Wrexham lost 3-1 at home to Queens Park Rangers on September 13, they were 21st in the 24-team Championship, with just four points from their opening five games. It felt like a brutal reality check for fans dreaming of promotion to the Premier League just two years after getting out of the National League. Manager Phil Parkinson refused to panic, though.
"If the set-up's not right in our defensive shape, those five yards away from where you need to be as a team, then we're going to get punished with that bit of extra quality. That is the difference at this level and we know that," Parkinson told reporters. "But we've changed the squad around completely and there was always going to be a period at the start where it doesn't go completely as you'd want it."
Luckily for Parkinson, his plea for patience did not fall on deaf ears and now, less than three months on from that chastening loss at the Racehorse Ground, Wrexham's remarkable bid for a fourth consecutive promotion is very much back on track.
Getty Images Sport'Invest to be competitive'
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 . "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."
AdvertisementGetty Images SportLearning from Liverpool
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."
'Keep going right until the end'
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."
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'Fiery' atmosphere
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.