Wrexham are heading into uncharted territory as the first club to achieve back-to-back-to-back promotions, but they’ll be scouring the history books for any lessons they can learn this summer.
After flying to the National League title and following that up with promotion from League Two, no one expected Wrexham to compete at the top of the League One table this year.
And yet, compete they did. While Birmingham City romped to the title, the Red Dragons came out on top in the race for second place, to achieve an historic third-successive promotion.
Phil Parkinson and his men will now be preparing for life in the Championship — their first time back in the second tier in 43 years — but will they stick or twist when it comes to freshening up the Wrexham squad?
We take a look back at the four teams to have won promotion from League One and then follow it up with promotion to the Premier League, to see what lessons can be gleaned for Wrexham.
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Watford signed 11 players but ended up in profit
Watford made it out of the old Second Division in the 1997/98 season as champions, before achieving a fifth-placed finish in the old First Division the following year and earning promotion via the play-offs.
Interestingly, the Hornets didn’t change anything major in the summer after the first promotion. They let eight players leave the club (including the retiring Lars Melvang) and signed 11 new players (including retaining striker Guy Whittingham on loan from Sheffield Wednesday after a successful stint the year previous).
Overall, Watford paid just over £200,000 for their new arrivals, while they earned over £315,000 in transfer fees coming into the club — largely thanks to the sale of Jason Lee to Chesterfield.
Indeed, losing Lee was a bit of a blow for Watford. He had scored ten goals in the 1997/98 campaign, so you’d equate that to Wrexham now selling someone like Elliot Lee this summer.
To replace him, Watford signed Carlisle United duo Nick Wright and Allan Smart. The pair scored just 13 goals between them (Wright got six and Smart got seven), but this, combined with the ten-goal haul of academy graduate, Gifton Noel-Williams, was enough to steer Watford to glory.
So, essentially, if Wrexham were to follow this example, they’d need a couple of new strikers to come in this summer, while giving someone like Harry Ashfield the opportunity to flourish in the first-team.
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Norwich City were ruthless in mixing up their squad
After winning the League One title in 2009/10, Norwich City returned to the second tier and were able to achieve another promotion the following season by finishing second in the Championship behind QPR.
Suffice to say, Norwich had a bit of an overhaul in the summer of 2010, though, with 14 new players arriving, including a deal for midfielder Andrew Surman that cost just under £1.5m, a further £500,000 on Simeon Jackson, and almost as much again on goalkeeper John Ruddy.
The Canaries also bagged loan deals for Premier League players like Sam Vokes and Henri Lansbury. And, perhaps most crucially, Norwich let go of some of the older players in their squad, with the likes of Gary Doherty, Michael Nelson, and Paul McVeigh all moving on.
On the face of it, Norwich’s behaviour that summer feels the most aligned with how Wrexham will probably operate this year. We know Wrexham have tough transfer decisions to make for the likes of Paul Mullin and Ollie Palmer, but we also know they won’t be afraid to cut ties if it’s for the best of the team.
One big sale made all the difference for Southampton
You wait for back-to-back promotions for years, and then two come along at once. Southampton achieved the feat in 2011/12, just a year after Norwich escaped the second tier in similar fashion.
The Saints pipped West Ham to second place by just two points, and were only one point away from the title winners, Reading, after an incredible campaign.
What’s fascinating is that the sale of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to Arsenal for a fee of around £15m essentially bankrolled Southampton’s transfer business that summer with plenty of cash leftover, helping them recruit well and strengthen the squad that triumphed in League One effectively.
They didn’t go crazy in the market, either, with Billy Sharp arriving from Doncaster Rovers for a little under £2m and Danny Fox from Burnley for a similar fee, while Jack Cork signing from Chelsea for around £750,000 was a great bit of business. All three played big roles in that promotion-winning campaign.
In the end, though, it was the form of Rickie Lambert — who scored 27 league goals that season — that really helped get Southampton over the line. He had been prolific in the third tier, and showed no signs of slowing down in the Championship.
Anyone reading this and fancying a Paul Mullin redemption arc next season?
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Ipswich Town thrived thanks to loan signings
Ipswich Town made it back to the Championship after finishing second in League One in the 2022/23 campaign.
No one backed them to be anywhere near the top of the second tier in 2023/24, but somehow they sustained a strong title challenge right down to the wire and went up in the automatic promotion spots alongside Leicester City.
In terms of goals, 13 apiece for Conor Chaplin and Nathan Broadhead, who was signed in the January window during the League One campaign, were really helpful to the cause.
Meanwhile, the likes of Omari Hutchinson, Lewis Travis, Brandon Williams, and Kieffer Moore, all signed on loan in the 2023/24 season, were fundamental to helping Ipswich remain consistent and pushing for promotion with great strength in depth in the squad.
We know Wrexham will have money to spend in the Championship, but it’s all about finding the right players. Parkinson and the recruitment team have done a good job in the past of signing players who improve the squad not just the starting XI, and that’ll be crucial again this summer if they want to replicate Ipswich’s success.