The spotlight that has followed Wrexham in recent years has gone hand-in-hand with the club’s quest to chase promotion to the next best league in England, a pursuit that has taken them from the nonleague game to the EFL Championship in just three years. Their charge up England’s pyramid includes one final step – promotion to the Premier League, a task that will likely be much more difficult than their rise up the ranks.
Wrexham had a solid economic advantage as they cruised through League One and League Two, fueled by a takeover by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac (formerly McElhenney) in 2020 and supplemented by a docuseries that has boosted the club’s profile. The financial realities of the Championship are a different story, though, making a fourth successive promotion much easier said than done. The Red Dragons’ modest transfer strategy so far suggests that even the club’s higher-ups recognize that history is not exactly on the side of the Championship’s newly promoted sides.
Midtable finishes are typical for teams who arrive from League One, relegation definitely more likely than promotion – only three times in the last decade did a season end with all three promoted sides staying up, while only three Championship teams ever have secured back-to-back promotions and ended up in the Premier League. Eyes will be on Wrexham to do the improbable, though, so here’s a glance at what it has historically taken for teams to book their spot in the Premier League.
The race for automatic promotion
Average point total in last 10 years: 93.45
The top two finishers in the Championship secure automatic promotion to the Premier League and have generally had to meet a high standard to do so. All but three of the 20 teams who have done so in the last decade have earned at least 90 points along the way, the group in total averaging 93.45 points – or 2.03 points per game in a 46 game season – to do so. The point totals keep climbing, too, with five of the last six teams to do it earning 96 points or more before booking their spot in the Premier League. The lowest point total needed to finish in the top two was 79, when the 2007-08 Stoke City team and 2012-13 Hull City team reached the promised land with less than 80 points, though that is an anomaly. It really might be wishful thinking for Wrexham or any promoted team to reach this height, since only three have finished in the top two in their first season back in the Championship.
The playoff promotion route
Average point total in last 10 years: 78.625
There is definitely more wiggle room when it comes to targeting the promotion playoffs, in which teams ranked third to sixth face off for the final spot in the next season’s edition of the Premier League. The points totals have been all over the place, too – while Sheffield United and Leeds United each qualified for the playoffs after earning 90 points in the last two years, last season’s Bristol City team tied the 2012-13 Leicester City team for the lowest points total of a team in the playoffs. Over the last decades, the playoff teams have averaged over 78 points, which is definitely more attainable than the 90-plus figure likely required to land inside the top two, but still unlikely for newcomers to the Championship. Only three promoted sides landed in a playoff spot after the regular season – and none of them won promotion.
How well do promoted teams usually fare?
Average point total in last 10 years: 53.17
There is a reason that promotion is rarely on the radar of a Championship newcomer — relegation is much, much likelier. While most promoted sides over the last decade have survived their first season in the Championship with an average of 53.17 points, most of them are not far off from the drop. The average finishing place of those promoted sides is 17.53, only a few places above the spots that guarantee a team a berth in League One the following campaign — 22, 23 and 24. Only three in the last 10 years have even managed to finish inside the top 10, the highlights including the 2022-23 Sunderland side that reached the playoffs and the 2023-24 Ipswich Town side that finished second. In the meantime, perhaps Wrexham and their fellow promoted sides should take more inspiration from the fact that no team has automatically dropped back down in the last two seasons, reversing course in a league that usually sees at least one newcomer return to League One per campaign.
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