The problem with Wrexham becoming such a story within the football world, thanks to the efforts of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney who made it that way, is that some of the excitement from Season 2 of Season 2 has disappeared a bit. Welcome to Wrexham. We know how this one ends. Wrexham wins the National League, and promote. That’s been the overall goal of the Hollywood duo’s quest as owners. Whatever happens in the meantime, good or bad, it all ends well, and wherever it should. They did their job, or at least the first part of their job.
That doesn’t mean season 2 doesn’t have good stories to tell, and it lets us in a little behind the scenes. But McElhenney and Reynolds are still determined to obscure what we see behind that curtain, making them look good even when they don’t.
The first episode of season 2 opens with Reynolds and McElhenney laying out the stakes for the upcoming 2022-2023 season. And both admit they have gone back on what they promised, which was to put Wrexham on stable ground after years and years of mismanagement that left the club on the brink of collapse. Instead, they spent lavishly and over their heads to get promoted, which would make the expenditure worthwhile. They describe the threat of not being promoted as leaving the club, ‘fuck’.
But there is a lack of ownership there. Reynolds and McElhenney act like that’s just something that happened to them, and not a conscious decision they made to go above and beyond their means to get a promotion. Again, we know it worked, so it will always be seen in a different light than if we were watching it live. They succeeded. But even if the duo took more responsibility for that decision and that way of running the club, should we still feel sorry for them? These are two guys who are richer than we’ll ever be. Sympathy doesn’t run deep, especially when we’re talking about a football club that means a lot to a lot of people. If Reynolds and McElhenney haven’t done their due diligence on what it might cost, even in the extreme, to get Wrexham out of the National League, that’s on them.
That continues with the main theme of the episode, which is the drive to demolish and rebuild the unused grandstand, the Kop. To be fair, these are not the normal owners trying to extort money from governments and taxpayers to build a stadium. The Leveling Up Fund that Wrexham has applied for has been set up specifically for infrastructure projects that benefit communities. Perhaps a football pitch is not at the top of the priority list, but we have seen what clubs mean to their towns and cities. It’s on the list. And again: we know that the club eventually got the money from the Welsh Government last April with some creativity.
Still, it feels like Reynolds and McElhenney have all their eggs in this basket, all the while knowing the stand would need to be rebuilt. That much was clear when all viewers saw it in the show’s first episode. Buying the club meant they had to take that on, and it certainly felt like they had no plan for this other than for the government to come and save the day. Everyone should have known that it was folly to rely on a Tory government.
The other crux of the episode is the visit of King Charles III. While a royal family visit anywhere is usually a pretty big story, the five to ten minutes we spent with Reynolds and McElhenney in the Royal Courtesy Class or whatever it was felt absolutely unnecessary and celebratory. “Look how hard we work in our mansion in LA!” The cover story, that somehow the charming King Charles, who barely knows where he is at any given time, would allow the government to finance the rebuilding of the Kop, was laughable. Let’s all imagine Charles calling Boris Johnson or Liz Truss – both a real meeting of the minds – to make the case for a football club in Wales. It might also have been worth a few minutes to see what the residents think about the Royal Family, just to provide some contrast.
That doesn’t mean the show didn’t have strengths. Showing us the rehabilitation of goalkeeper Rob Lainton and the painful monotony of it is something we don’t normally see and probably take for granted as fans. When what he has carried on his return from injury, in that he is in the final year of his contract, it only adds more weight.
The same goes for Season 1’s topics that revolve around an unexpected celebrity, like cafe owner Wayne Jones. And the show doesn’t put too much effort into just presenting it as a funny, enriching experience, as Jones and other fans asked to sign shirts are presented as confused, and wary as they find it entertaining sometimes. These are not the things they asked for or expected, and showing all sides of their new personality is a great example of the very unique world Wrexham finds itself in given the size of the club.
Hopefully, Welcome to Wrexham leans more into that as season 2 progresses, since we know how the main arc plays out. The idea is still to make Reynold and McElhenney seem like the most charming people in the world, which we already knew they were. But their struggles as owners are the only problems they impose on themselves, and there was more at stake than just their money if it failed, and for many more people who didn’t make any of these decisions. It seems like they are becoming more and more sports owners by the month.
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