Wrexham may returned to the EFL with a Hollywood ending in mind, but Salford City might offer a word of warning this weekend.
The League Two giants go head-to-head at the Racecourse Ground on Saturday – a clash that will be exclusively live on talkSPORT 2 – in what will surely be the most-watched fourth tier game in history.
Wrexham have enjoyed a strong start after returning to the EFL for the first time in 15 years, going into the clash in seventh position with five wins from their opening 12 games.
Meanwhile Salford look set to be in for another tough campaign as despite being on a run of three-straight wins, they find themselves in the bottom half of the table.
Salford – led by Peter Lim and Class Of ’92 members Gary Neville, Phil Neville, David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs – enjoyed four promotions in five years to rise through the non-league ranks to secure their spot in the EFL in 2019.
Speaking about their promotion, Neville said: “We’ve made some really good decisions which have enabled us to get four promotions in five years.
“If we carry on making good decisions, accepting the going will get more difficult, we have a good chance of getting out of League Two in the next two or three years.
“We’ve prepared ourselves to be a Football League club. Our ground is League One compliant.
“If we carry on making good decisions, we can carry on going through the leagues.”
Unfortunately, Neville’s prediction hasn’t gone to plan at all, with Salford still rooted in a mid-table position after finishing eighth, tenth, and seventh in their three years.
Now in their fourth season in League Two, Neville was reminded of his prediction that Salford would be in the Championship by 2029, to which he replied: “When we said that we also said the Football League in eight years.
“I know a lot of clubs who have money and are not successful. The aim was always to be as aggressive as possible to get into the Football League. It was a simple economic argument from day one.
“If you want to get out of the National League a budget of £700,000 or £800,000 won’t get you out and it will cost you two or three times as much to get out the longer you are down there.
“It’s cheaper to spend more and go up. It’s simple economics and we have the ability to do that.
“Now I would hope it would balance out and we can have wages reflective of the league we’re in.
“The dream would be to reach League One and see what we do from there.”
Salford’s struggles to maintain their upward trajectory will be a real lesson for Wrexham.
Co-owners Reynolds and McElhenney have been open on their hopes of reaching the Premier League since day one, something that they reiterated after securing promotion this year.
“That’s what you see from Premier League clubs, Championship League clubs.
“We want to walk the walk, even as a fifth-tier club. We say this all the time, but we want to be in the Premier League, as crazy as that sounds to some people.
If it is theoretically possible to go from the fifth tier in professional football all the way to the Premier League, why wouldn’t we do that? Why wouldn’t we use our last drop of blood to get there?
“We’re in it for the ride. This is a multi-decade project.”
Adrian Durham even predicted that promotion was a genuine prospect, telling talkSPORT “They can certainly get promoted this year, but if we look at 10 years and what Coventry and Luton have done – it’s not impossible that they could get to the Premier League.
“They would need to be committed all the way through that period of time and there’s challenges to face from a team that couldn’t get through the playoffs when they took over to getting to the Premier League – that’s a huge ask, but I don’t think it’s impossible.
“That should be the target. Realistically, it would not surprise me if they got themselves to the Championship in that time, but it would be an incredible achievement if they got themselves into the Premier League.”
According to Capology.com, Wrexham have an annual wage bill of around £4.86million per years – the highest League two, however that is offset by a number of lucrative sponsorship arrangements with brands such as TikTok, HP and United Airlines.
Those deals undoubtedly bolster the coffers at the Racecourse Ground, as does the added exposure of Disney Plus’s ‘Welcome To Wrexham’ series which is a global TV hit.
Everything is in place for Wrexham to grow bigger and bigger as the years progress, but as Salford will attest, the competitive nature of the EFL means that winning the game on a balance sheet is far different to winning between the white lines on a Saturday afternoon.