Wrexham are looking to Premier League players to get them fourth promotion in a row

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After making just one loan signing for their first team in four years as Wrexham manager, Phil Parkinson has already begun exploring that market to improve his squad for the 2025-26 Championship.

A run of three successive promotions under celebrity owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney means Wrexham are looking forward to their first season in the second tier of the English football pyramid for 43 years.

The step up from League One is considerable, as shown by how the three clubs who made it in 2023-24 have fared this season: Portsmouth finished 16th, Oxford United 17th and Derby County ended up just a point clear of the relegation zone in 19th. Plymouth Argyle, League One’s champions two years ago, are among the three teams going down, having finished one place above the bottom three 12 months earlier.

Whether it is to stay afloat or get towards the top end of the table and chase promotion, many Championship clubs lean on the Premier League loans market. Not only is borrowing players a way of bringing in elite talent but their parent clubs will also often cover a decent proportion of the loanee’s wages while he is with another team.

Among those to make a big impact in the second tier this season were Tottenham Hotspur winger Manor Solomon (title winners Leeds United) and Bournemouth’s Jaidon Anthony (promoted Burnley). Morgan Gibbs-White, James McAtee (both Sheffield United) and Taylor Harwood-Bellis (Southampton) have also played integral roles in promotion pushes as loanees from top-flight clubs over recent years.

Manor Solomon, on loan from Spurs, helped Leeds get promoted to the Premier League (Harry Trump/Getty Images)

Wrexham’s rapid rise from the fifth tier means recruitment will be key this summer, with nine of their current 22-man squad, plus goalkeepers Arthur Okonkwo and Callum Burton, never having kicked a ball in the Championship.

“The loan market is something we are looking at,” Parkinson tells The Athletic. “It’s all about touching base with the Premier League loans managers, making sure we have an understanding of who could become available.

“A lot of those players (whose loan spells for 2024-25 have now ended) will probably go back and start pre-season with their clubs because managers like numbers around them for pre-season games. We can probably attract a better calibre of player than we’d have been able to do in the past.”

Okonkwo remains the only player signed on loan by Wrexham to make a senior appearance since Parkinson’s appointment in July 2021.

The Arsenal academy graduate arrived shortly before 2023’s summer window closed following Ben Foster’s abrupt retirement four games into the club’s first season back in the English Football League (EFL). Okonkwo made a huge impression in north Wales and his move was made permanent last summer on a free transfer. Fellow goalkeeper Luke McNicholas, who has not played for Wrexham’s first team, was also signed on what equated to a trial period from the Republic of Ireland’s Sligo Rovers in August 2023 before his move was made permanent five months later.

Otherwise, Parkinson has steered clear of borrowing players from elsewhere, focusing instead on permanent signings. Part of this was by design but also because the players usually made available to lower-division clubs by the Premier League elite are young, inexperienced and far from the finished article.

Then, there’s the proliferation of season-long loan deals in recent years that contain a mid-season break clause. Often, a loanee who excels in League One or Two will be recalled by their parent club in January and then sent out again to somewhere further up the pyramid for the rest of the season.

For the parent club, such recall clauses make perfect sense — their player can be tested at a higher level over the campaign’s second half — but they do little to help the lower-league manager who suddenly has to find a ready-made replacement for a key part of his team at short notice.

Wrexham almost had a taste of this in last year’s League Two promotion campaign when Arsenal could have recalled Okonkwo during the first 21 days of January. The sighs of relief at the club as that deadline passed were audible.

Arthur Okonkwo’s loan at Wrexham became permanent (Pete Norton/Getty Images)

Wrexham now being in the top tier of the three-division EFL negates this possibility slightly, though a Premier League manager may still look to recall a loanee in the winter window to suit his own ends.

Explaining why temporary moves have been limited during his Wrexham reign, Parkinson says: “Premier League teams are reluctant to loan out their elite players into League One.

“You also have to remember that, with loan players, there’s a certain expectation they will play (for whoever is borrowing them). Sometimes from the clubs and sometimes from the player. It is about their development. You have to be careful of that. You have to make sure you don’t make false promises to a player. He comes in, doesn’t play, and you end up with a disgruntled player and a damaged reputation with a Premier League club.

“It has to be a player you believe can make an instant impact and is going to make a significant contribution as the season goes on.”

Along with a possible move into the loan market, Parkinson is following the successful blueprint of previous seasons by focusing on free agents this summer before widening the search. Among the important players he’s landed without paying a transfer fee are Paul Mullin, Elliot Lee and Okonkwo.

This season, Wrexham clinching promotion with a week to spare has helped in this respect, as it allowed Parkinson to speak to agents early about prospective signings. Already, the club have been linked with a host of big-name free transfers, including Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, Leeds front man Patrick Bamford, both senior England internationals, and Fulham’s Scotland midfielder Tom Cairney.

Humphrey Ker, Wrexham’s commercial director and the man who ultimately set McElhenney on the road to buying the club, recently poured cold water on those suggestions during a round of interviews to promote series four of the Welcome to Wrexham documentary.

There has been speculation about Wrexham signing Jamie Vardy (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

Parkinson is keeping his transfer plans under wraps, but recognises this step up to the Championship is a considerable one.

“The quality level goes up,” he says. “Power and pace are key. You look at the physical data and it jumps from League Two to League One but then it goes up again (in the Championship), certainly in high-speed running and the sprint distance and the power of the players.

“We need to be ready for that. But what an amazing challenge, including working with the players we have got. And how everyone has to step things up, just as they have after previous promotions. What a challenge for lads like Max (Cleworth), who has come up the divisions with us. Can he go again?

“There are a lot of interesting situations with our current players. But a real determination from a lot of them to say, ‘Yeah, this is an opportunity to go and play in the second tier, one of the hardest and most competitive divisions in world football’.”

Even after the recent releases of Steven Fletcher, Mark Howard and Sam Dalby, Wrexham have 27 senior players under contract for next season. With the EFL restricting clubs to a 25-man squad in the Championship, a good number will have to leave i the coming weeks and months as others arrive.

Getting players out the door, however, may not be so easy, especially as this most recent promotion will have led to wages rising to reflect the club’s Championship status. Settlements are likely to have to be agreed to smooth those departures.

As for who comes in, only time will tell. If the 2024-25 season is anything to go by, when the starting XI morphed from including eight or even nine players in the early weeks who were still around from Wrexham’s National League days to just a couple by the run-in, the team is likely to evolve across the club’s first campaign at Championship level since 1981-82.

“The new players, as always, had to find their way into the team,” says Parkinson, explaining how this season’s team selection panned out. “There’s an element of loyalty to the lads who have got us to the position we are in. But the team evolved over the season.

“It is something myself, Steve (Parkin, assistant), Dave (Jones, first-team coach) and Ady (Davison, goalkeeping coach) are very proud of. We evolved and improved as a team as the season went on. We got more control of games with the ball and we adapted tactically in games against better opposition. Ultimately, the record speaks for itself.”

(Top photo: Wrexham after promotion from League One in April; Kya Banasko via Getty Images)

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