WHAT HAPPENED?
Ker, the man credited with introducing Rob McElhenney to the idea of buying a football club and later appointed as a senior official at Wrexham, has suggested it is okay for the Red Dragons to consolidate in League One next season, despite the ultimate aim still being to reach the Premier League as soon as possible.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Wrexham were a non-league club as recently as last year and had spent 15 consecutive seasons outside the EFL until promotion into League Two just 12 months ago. Their time in the fourth tier has been short, but Ker insists that things like infrastructure might need time to catch up before pushing to get straight into the Championship, a level Wrexham haven’t been at since 1982. Even their last season as high as League One was 19 years ago.
WHAT KER SAID
“I think promotion would be a real push,” Ker told The Independent as the third series of Welcome to Wrexham nears its premiere on Disney+. “I think we’ve often talked about the idea that it takes three transfer windows to really build a squad into what you need to compete in any one division and next season will be one window shorter than that.
“But I think the core of this team is very strong. They’re very strong personalities, good players and they love each other, so that’s a great basis to build from. We’ll be adding players in the summer and sadly saying goodbye to one or two, which is sort of just the nature of football, and then we’ll sort of see where we wind up.
“Inside the building, we’re like, ‘look, our objective is get up and stay up, stabilise and build a good platform and go again the following year.’ But stranger things than promotion have happened – we might go through the division again.
“To be honest, that would probably be too fast for us. It wouldn’t actually be that good for the club as a whole if we did go all the way through this year because we’d just be going so quickly. Then we’d be trying to catch up with infrastructure and our facilities and everything would be a big, big challenge. So I think something nice and comfortable – upper mid-table, please! Tenth. I’d be very happy with that.”
WHAT NEXT FOR WREXHAM?
The time now is for celebration as Wrexham head back to Las Vegas trying to match last season’s promotion party in Sin City. But the hard work won’t be far away as preparations for the huge challenge that awaits them in 2024-25 get underway. Besides, it’s only three months until high profile pre-season friendlies against Premier League sides Bournemouth and Chelsea in July.
