Surging Wrexham welcome Chelsea in FA Cup action

Ryan Reynolds side is ahead of schedule as they chase Premier League promotion, but first it's an FA Cup showdown

By James Benge

Mar 6, 2026 at 3:25 pm ET • 6 min read

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It wasn't supposed to be going this well this early. Fans of Wrexham might have got hooked on the dizzying highs of promotion, but 2025-26 was supposed to be the year of consolidation. It probably still will be. However, as the Racecourse readies itself for the glitz and glamour of Chelsea in the fifth round of the FA Cup, there is a very real prospect that this sort of game could be the norm next season.

With 11 games left to play in the Championship, Phil Parkinson's side occupies sixth place, the final spot among the quartet who would then enter the division's promotion playoffs, and by the standards of this most unpredictable of leagues, their four-point cushion to seventh is quite healthy. Meanwhile, the form table looks even more impressive, since the start of 2026, only Norwich City have accrued more points than Wrexham's 23. For the third year of the last four, it looks like this is a team positioned for a purple patch down the stretch. If you need telling what happened in those other seasons, well, wait until you find out what it is that has transformed a dilapidated club from North Wales into one of England's dozen leading content vehicles. No spoilers here.

Well, a few actually. After all, there is something interesting about how swiftly Wrexham have adapted to the Championship. Every expectation was that they wouldn't, for the simple reason that they had not been that good in League One. Below you'll see a 10-game rolling average of Wrexham's expected goal (xG) difference in the third tier and then the second. After some initial growing pains, the Dragons were clearly a better team than most, but not by that great a margin. At the peak of their powers, they were hovering around half an xG better than their opponents per game. That's not bad at all, but it's not remarkably good, certainly nothing on the level of Birmingham City last season.

For 2024-25 as a whole, a non-penalty xG difference of 0.19 per game put Wrexham eighth in the division. It looked like time had caught up with a squad that had risen through League Two, and even in a few cases, the National League. That seemed all the truer when a first season in the second tier since 1982-83 began with the likes of Southampton, West Bromwich Albion, and even doomed Sheffield Wednesday hammering at the Wrexham door.

Don't miss a special broadcast when, to mark five Years at Wrexham AFC, co-chairmen Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds host a live
broadcast during Wrexham vs. Swansea City on March 13. Live from Wrexham with Rob & Ryan will bring fans into the action with a unique matchday experience, featuring unscripted match analysis and unfiltered, real-time reactions from Mac and Reynolds alongside Sky Sports presenter David Prutton. As always, you can catch the action on Paramount+.

What improved is partially what improves in every season for Wrexham lately. They recruited really well, something that is all the more impressive this season, given that it is the first where their finances have not afforded them a prohibitive advantage over most of the rest of the league. Now certainly there are teams in the Championship who couldn't drop $8.7 million on the excellent Callum Doyle (who may be bound for the Premier League, however Wrexham's season ends, $10 million on Ben Sheaf and $13.4 million on Nathan Broadhead. Their next expenditure of $45 million is comfortably the biggest in the second tier this season, but at least it has been money shrewdly spent.

Wrexham have been at this squad refreshing long enough now that they can do it with their eyes closed. Star of two previous promotion campaigns Arthur Okonkwo has won the goalkeeper gloves back off Danny Ward, while Max Cleworth and George Dobson remain as valued in the Championship as they were League One. A relative veteran like Oliver Rathbone was probably the sort of player you'd sign to make an outsized impact in the third tier, not the second, and yet in recent weeks, he's proven himself to be a "phenomenal" addition to the promotion cause, as Parkinson put it after the 29-year-old signed a new contract last month.

This then is a team with the sort of established foundations that allowed new additions well-versed in the Championship to immediately settle in and kick on. Kieffer Moore is enjoying his best scoring form in half a decade, Josh Windass has impressed too, while Rathbone, Broadhead, and Sam Smith have also added to the goals column. If the early weeks of the season were about plugging leaks at the back, now Wrexham's attack has begun to motor.

The evolution over revolution in the transfer market is reflective of what has happened on the pitch too. It probably helps them that the game as a whole has gravitated towards their strengths, too. Long balls in the Championship are on the up, just as they are in the Premier League, and there is no team that wins more aerial duels in the division than Parkinson's. Wrexham sit deep, they win the crosses the other team puts in the box, and then their goalkeeper hits the ball in the direction of the tall boys like Dobson, Sheaf, and of course, Moore. You might not like it, but this is what peak male performance looks like on a football pitch in 2026.

It ought not to surprise you either that this is a team who are quite good at defending set pieces, allowing a below-average 0.3 xG per game from dead balls. Given their size and heft, you'd probably like to see Parkinson's men make a bit more for themselves in terms of pure shooting chances from corners and free kicks, but when a Wrexham head does meet the ball, the results have been quite decent. Fourteen goals from set pieces, a second-best in the division eight conceded. Wrexham are a team that suits the times we are in.

setpiece-defensive-shot-quality-championship-england-1.png — CBS Sports

All of which might make the FA Cup an unwelcome distraction for Wrexham. If there's a chance of a top-six finish, then surely the last thing you need is anything else mucking up your fixture list? Not if your captain, Dom Hyam, who said, "It could be deemed as a distraction, but what an amazing distraction it is.

"You want to play against the best teams and the best players - it's what you work hard for, to play against Premier League teams in the FA Cup. Hopefully, we can be there one day and be a Premier League team playing someone in the FA Cup too."

As to when that day might be, it really could be sooner than anyone, not least this column, thought at the start of the season. Wrexham are an improving team whose level of play for the season as a whole is not far off league average.

The teams that are outperforming them and are not already fighting for the top two are so far back from the 57-point mark that it will take an impressive burst to the finish to get them into the top six. Even if Southampton or Watford rise rapidly, it's not outside the realms of possibility that Hull City drop down. Bookmakers and projection models largely agree that Wrexham are at least 50:50 to make the top six. From there, things can happen, and before you know it, the dream of north Wales' finest in the Premier League is a reality before anyone could imagine it, the fourth successive promotion that was supposed to be impossible becomes a reality.

Right now Chelsea at SToK Cae Ras still feels like the old days of Newcastle, West Ham and of course Arsenal being felled in a giant killing. On their current trajectory, though, it really could be the norm sooner than you might have expected.