Wrexham are chasing another promotion with the Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds project continuing to move forward at pace.
We are now inside the final two months of the League One season and promotion to the Championship is up for grabs.
Wrexham are in a great position right now, sitting third in the League One table but only behind Wycombe Wanderers on goal difference.
Wycombe beat Rotherham in midweek to go back into second place, having briefly lost second place to Wrexham.
There will be twists and turns to come but Wrexham could land a third straight promotion and compete in the Championship next season.
This Wrexham rise has been extraordinary but one club may be left wondering what might have been.
Hartlepool stuck in National League after missing out on Hollywood takeover
The story goes that Rob McElhenney was urged to watch ‘Sunderland ’Til I Die’ by Humphrey Ker, sparking his interest in football.
McElhenney wanted to own a club and sent Ker away to analyse some clubs that he could buy alongside potential joint-investors – which ended up being Ryan Reynolds.
Wrexham came out on top of Ker’s research but only two points ahead of Hartlepool United; Wrexham scored 38 out of 50 in Ker’s grading and Hartlepool came in with 36 out of 50.
Ker explained to The Athletic in 2023 that Wrexham had been the front-runner all along, but Hartlepool were teed up as a second choice in case things went wrong.
McElhenney and Reynolds bought Wrexham for £2million in 2021 and the rest, as they say, is history.
Wrexham could be on the brink of the Championship in few of weeks, but that is certainly not the case at Hartlepool.
One glance at the National League table will show you Hartlepool stuck in 15th place; not going up and unlikely to be going down.
This is Hartlepool’s sixth National League season in the last eight, spending a brief period back in League Two before relegation again.
Hartlepool were League One regulars between 2007 and 2013 but have found sustained success difficult in recent years – just like Wrexham before McElhenney and Reynolds arrived.
Hartlepool have now gone eight games without a win and their situation is a reminder of how far Wrexham have come in such a short space of time.
Maybe success is just around the corner for them, but fans must wonder just where the club would be had the Hollywood A-listers picked Hartlepool over Wrexham back in 2021.
Jeff Stelling stance on McElhenney and Reynolds
Wrexham feels will no doubt have some sympathy for Hartlepool both as a club and as a community.
That feeling of being stuck in the National League is one Wrexham fans know all too well and the landscape in the North East certainly has parallels to Wrexham pre-takeover.
Hartlepool fans would be forgiven for looking at Wrexham and wondering what could have been, but Jeff Stelling feels that there can be no regrets.
The former Soccer Saturday host and honorary Hartlepool president told iNews in 2023 that missing out on the Hollywood investment was a ‘real sliding doors moment’.
Stelling claims that it’s ‘100 per cent true’ that McElhenney and Reynolds wanted Hartlepool over Wrexham, believing that the club was their first choice over Wrexham – despite that Ker claims.
Stelling has no doubt wondered just where his beloved Hartlepool would be with that investment, but felt that the club just had to move on.
“It was a real sliding doors moment for the club,” said Stelling.
“It’s 100 per cent true that they wanted to buy Hartlepool and it’s ironic they went for Wrexham in the end who are going into the Football League when the club who was their first choice, which was us, are going out of the Football League.
“It’s gone now though, there’s no point in regrets,” he added as Hartlepool fight for progress without the McElhenney and Reynolds effect.