An incredible season was brought to an end this weekend for Wrexham with a win over Lincoln City, and the Red Dragons can now sit back and laugh in the face of anyone who ever doubted them.
After securing back-to-back promotions from the National League and League Two, the idea of challenging for another this year was never really on the cards for anyone outside of Wrexham.
But, that quickly changed, with Phil Parkinson’s men proving they could handle themselves in League One, and that they would not only survive, but be a force to be reckoned with.
Despite some bumps in the road, Wrexham secured an historic third-successive promotion last weekend by defeating Charlton Athletic, while Wycombe Wanderers floundered once again.
Now, the Hollywood dream will reach new levels in the Championship. And, with the season over, we can take a look back at what the expectations were for Wrexham at the start of the campaign, and it’s hilarious, really, how much people doubted the Red Dragons.
What the supercomputer predicted for Wrexham at the start of the season
Incredibly, before the 2024/25 campaign got underway, Opta’s supercomputer didn’t give Wrexham a prayer of being anywhere near the promotion conversation.
In fact, the prediction had Wrexham battling against relegation and expected them to survive by the skin of their teeth by finishing in 20th place.
On Wrexham’s chances of going up, the folks at Opta had written: “For anyone expecting Wrexham to make it another consecutive promotion, the Opta supercomputer isn’t so sure. In fact, the Welsh team owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney finished in the top two in just 0.02% of 10,000 simulations.”
Instead, Wrexham were given a 37% chance of going down. And, in fairness, the supercomputer was pretty accurate with its relegation calls, tipping both Shrewsbury and Crawley Town to go down, while Bristol Rovers and Cambridge United were only marginally above Wrexham in the predicted table.
On Wrexham’s supposed relegation fight, the Opta team said: “Could they go straight back down to League Two? The Opta supercomputer says no, but only just. There are only four teams who were relegated more often in its simulations, with the Red Dragons going down 37.0% of the time.”
Remarkably, Wrexham’s chances of finishing in the top three were so small that Opta didn’t even put a number in their column when assessing the odds of any team claiming any of the 24 places in the final league table.
Even finishing in tenth place only conjured a 1% chance for Wrexham, which shows just how incredible their achievement this season has been.
Wrexham’s promotion success is truly a miracle, it deserves more credit
Looking back at where Wrexham have come from in the last 17 years since their relegation from the Football League in 2008, it’s astounding, really, what has been achieved.
Obviously, the backing of Rob and Ryan helps massively, but money doesn’t always guarantee success as we’ve seen many times before. You have to find the right ingredients, and from top to bottom, Wrexham have done that.
Wrexham really had no right to go and get promoted again. The supercomputer was correct to doubt them so heavily, but if there’s one thing this Red Dragons team loves more than anything, it’s proving people (and computers) wrong.
They’ll be back in the second tier after 43 years away, and we know that they will go big in the summer to try and compete at that level.
Surely, they couldn’t get promoted again, could they? It’ll cost a pretty penny to have a chance of promotion, but Wrexham are dreamers, and we would never doubt them again now.