Humphrey Ker on Wrexham’s EFL return: “There are more people having a go at us now”
With another 20,000 team shirts on order for Christmas to go with the 35,000 snapped up earlier in the season, Wrexham’s ability to generate funds since returning to the EFL this summer continues at pace.
An average Championship club would be very happy to shift such numbers in a year, let alone in Wrexham’s position two divisions below that level in the fourth tier of the English game.
It is a similar story in terms of annual turnover, with the 2023-24 income levels at the newly sponsored Racecourse Ground — one of many lucrative commercial deals struck on the back of the Welcome To Wrexham documentary series’ success — expected to hit £20million ($24.3m at current rates).
Again, those are the sort of figures more normally associated with a second-tier club not in receipt of parachute payments following relegation from the Premier League.
Up against such hugely impressive financial data for a League Two outfit, Wrexham’s on-field fortunes are lagging a little behind. Tuesday’s battling goalless draw at unbeaten Mansfield Town left Phil Parkinson’s side ninth in the 24-team division with 17 points after 11 of the regular season’s 46 games.
Being two points outside the play-off places is not a bad start, by any means, but it’s also not quite the ‘all guns blazing’ impact many bookmakers were forecasting after last season’s record-breaking National League title success, William Hill, for instance, pricing Wrexham at odds of 3-1 to win the League Two title before a ball had been kicked, with Stockport County (6-1) and Notts County (15-2) their nearest rivals.
“There’s been an adjustment period and a few factors at play that have helped create some freakish results,” says Humphrey Ker, Wrexham’s executive director, when asked about their playing fortunes since returning to the EFL after 15 years in non-League.
“But I remain confident we will be there or thereabouts come the end of the season. We got into a nice groove for a few weeks and then got derailed by Stockport (when losing 5-0). What I do believe we have, as a club, is this slight hangover from the National League, in that we feel we have to win every week.
“If you drop points in that competition, it is a disaster (due to only one club being promoted automatically). I was watching a few episodes of the documentary last night and was reminded of the 2-2 (home) draw we had with Woking. I remember that feeling like the end of the world at the time. Same with the draw against Maidenhead.
“This division is not like that. Leyton Orient won League Two last season having drawn 13 games and lost seven.”
Ker, a lifelong Liverpool fan, may remain grounded amid the wildly fluctuating results that have seen Wrexham concede five goals on three different occasions in those opening 11 matches and yet still sit just three points adrift of the three automatic promotion spots.
But is it the same for the club’s celebrity owners Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, who by the end of last season’s titanic title tussle with Notts County looked emotionally spent?
“Rob and Ryan are being remarkably calm,” says the man responsible for setting the Hollywood pair on the path towards buying the Welsh club. “Which surprises me! Again, they appreciate it is early days and that allows a certain leeway. I really don’t think the shape of the league has quite formed yet.
“We are a big, strong, physical team who can grind it out when the chips are down, as we have shown a few times already this season. Let’s look forward to the dog-days of January and February when the (weather) conditions can be horrible.
“Mind, I said Notts County would struggle in those conditions this time last year and look how that turned out with them flying through that period!”
The Athletic is sitting down with Ker to discuss how Wrexham have found their first two months back in the Football League. Not just on the field but off it, with the second series of the documentary that turned a previously provincial club into a global sensation approaching the halfway stage of its 15-episode run.
Then there’s the Kop development that has stalled for a variety of reasons, including the need to relocate an electrical substation servicing the university accommodation that sits next to the stadium as well as divert a sewer that runs under the land concerned.
Planning permission was granted last Friday to solve the drainage problem, but other issues remain before the £25million project can get underway, such as the transfer of the lease for the stadium from the Wrexham Supporters Trust and the finalising of a grant funding agreement with the county council.
With tickets for home games almost as hard to come by as a Chester FC fan pleased to see their big local rivals’ upturn in fortunes since McElhenney and Reynolds rode into town, these delays are likely to prove costly.
“We remain hopeful,” says Ker, when asked about when work may finally begin on the 5,500-capacity new Kop. “We just need a bunch of dominoes to fall into place. The one thing we are confident about is that whenever we do start, it will take about 11 months to build.
“(Opening for) The start of next season won’t be hit. But if we did, say, finish some of the preliminary work this side of Christmas, you would be in a position to possibly be open for some test events during next season. Then, open it formally the season afterwards. But, ultimately, that’s a big ‘if’.
“What I can say for definite is it remains a very high priority for us. We are beavering away on it as quickly as we can, with the help of the council, the FAW (Football Association of Wales), the university and so on. We don’t have any complaints about where we have wound up. It is just a reality of how it has all shaken out. Everyone is keen to get things done, there’s just a lot of crossing t’s and dotting i’s to do along the way.”
What isn’t in doubt is the return of international football to Wrexham.
Next week will see Wales’ senior team play at the Racecourse for only the second time in 15 years, with Gibraltar the visitors.
It is hoped this can be a first step towards matches involving the national team — both the men’s and women’s versions — being staged more regularly in north Wales, with the planned new Kop a key factor in realising those ambitions.
“UEFA has no problem with a three-sided ground in front of 10,000 people,” says Ker about the planning that has gone into Gibraltar’s visit. “Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Andorra and a few others (UEFA members) don’t have gigantic modern stadia.
“But we do need to get the stadium up to UEFA Category 4 status in time, which requires all sorts of bits and pieces. Such as a press room, photography areas, a mixed zone for interviews, and multiple camera positions. Things we are a bit behind on.
“For Gibraltar, we will have temporary marquees. The FAW and ourselves can sort those. But, long term, we want this to be a base for more competitive games, more women’s team games, the under-21s. What we don’t want to have to do is put up a tent every time anyone comes. The Kop will help solve that.”
Life has been hectic for Ker and the rest of the senior leadership team since promotion with plenty of criteria having to be met as a club following the step up from non-League.
He’s even appeared on ITV daytime talk show This Morning — “Loved Holly, loved Dermot, very excited to meet them,” he says, unprompted about its presenters Holly Willoughby and Dermot O’Leary — to again underline how life at Wrexham is not like what goes on at any other League Two club.
Welcome To Wrexham’s second series is only likely to push them further into the spotlight, with reviews being overwhelmingly positive despite some supporters saying there wasn’t enough match action in the six episodes shown so far, which have focused on everything from autism through to King Charles’ visit last December and the women’s team bidding for promotion to the Welsh top flight.
“I get that all folk in Wrexham want to see is 40 minutes solid of us blasting various teams to pieces last season,” says Ker, who has a consultancy producer role on the show.
“I want to see the same, which is why I can’t wait to see the last three or four (episodes), which I know focus heavily on that Notts County-Yeovil-Boreham Wood era — days that will live long in the memory for me.
“But I do believe the documentary is going down very well with the viewing public. That’s great for us as the documentary is the club’s number one marketing and commercial asset. It draws so much attention to the club and induces interest from the sponsors.
“It also gets people to buy more kits, which is why we have just ordered another eye-watering number in time for Christmas. I believe the number is around 20,000, on top of the summer order (35,000).”
To put those numbers into context, Bradford City, comfortably League Two’s best-supported club with average home crowds of more than 18,000 last season, sold 15,000 team shirts in 2021-22.
Down the line, Wrexham are looking at possibly setting up a distribution hub in the U.S. to make it easier, and cheaper, for supporters on the other side of the Atlantic to get their hands on club merchandise.
“Phil (Parkinson) and the guys have done an amazing job,” says Ker when asked why the club have become so popular, both at home and abroad, that extra merchandise is required. “We have had all these crazy, wonderful games that finish 7-5, 6-5, and 5-5. But it all goes hand in hand. The documentary has created an interest in the team and the team has delivered exciting results.”
Being able to see the team live during this past summer’s four-match tour of the U.S., which included games against top Premier League sides Chelsea and Manchester United, will also no doubt have helped fuel interest first triggered by series one of the documentary.
“We are still waiting on the final facts and figures from the tour,” says Ker, “in terms of the various different commercial benefits. But I do believe, even without those figures, that the tour was an overwhelming success.
“I am aware, in saying that, some will not agree. A narrative does seem to have developed among fans that pre-season was a disaster and it is why we lost the first game (5-3 at home to MK Dons) and drew the second one (1-1 at Wimbledon).
“The same thing was said last year and we didn’t go to the U.S. then. We won the first game but then drew away to Yeovil and lost to Chesterfield. Fans were saying, ‘It’s a shambles and it’s because pre-season wasn’t right’.
“For us, the tour was a great success and we will be investigating the prospect of doing it again before long.”
The flipside of this increased spotlight, Ker detects, has been an increased negativity among other clubs’ supporters.
“No question there are more people having a go at us now,” he says.
“There are two factors in that. One: jealousy. I read comments from a lot of people who seem desperate to push the narrative that these two ‘Hollywood clowns’ see the club as their plaything and don’t care a thing about it and how they will destroy it.
“I do find that funny considering the proliferation of terrible owners in English football, who are openly fleecing their clubs or driving them into administration. Or are owned by some terrifying military junta from somewhere that specialises in throwing people down wells or whatever.
“It is amazing how many people burn energy in telling our fans, ‘I am going to laugh so much when you go out of business because of those two Hollywood idiots’.
“The other factor is we are slowly becoming a threat.
“When season one of the documentary came out, there were lots of fans (at clubs further up the divisions) saying, ‘Oh, good on them’, while patting Wrexham on the head. But then we win the National League and it changes to, ‘Oh, we might have to play them in a couple of seasons, so I’ll have to be really annoyed they have more money than we do’.”
