Are Wrexham on course for promotion?

A year that began with Steven Fletcher bagging the first hat-trick of his career in English football ended with the former international once again delivering the goods to power Wrexham back into the automatic promotion places.

Fletcher’s stunning 90th-minute winner meant 2024 finished on an appropriate high for Phil Parkinson’s side, as Wigan Athletic became the latest side to succumb to the EFL’s best home record.

The Scot’s fourth goal of the season — and his third in as many appearances at the SToK Cae Ras — means Wrexham reach the halfway stage of the season on 48 points, one behind leaders Birmingham City, albeit having played two games more.

Wycombe Wanderers (third) and Huddersfield Town (fourth) ended the year on a rare low after unexpectedly dropping points on Sunday against Charlton Athletic and Burton Albion respectively. But both seem well equipped to go the distance, suggesting the battle to escape League One might just be the most keenly fought of the lot in the EFL this season.

As it stands with the top four all displaying impressive consistency, we could be looking at a repeat of the 2022-23 race when even a return of two points per game wasn’t enough to guarantee a place in the top two with Sheffield Wednesday finishing third on 96.

“We’re pleased with the return,” says Parkinson, when asked about Wrexham stepping up to this level after 19 years away. “To have 48 points at the halfway stage is good.

“We know there’s work to be done. Everyone is aware of that. Our feet are firmly on the ground, as always. But, listen, you can’t not enjoy coming to work every day and being part of this club. There’s a spring in the step of the lads, including the ones out of the team who are ready to step in.”

Rounding off the year with three points and an injury time winner

#WxmAFC pic.twitter.com/h0TfClclrP

— Wrexham AFC (@Wrexham_AFC) December 29, 2024

Even allowing for how Wednesday needed the fall-back option of the play-offs to go up two years ago thanks to the remarkable consistency of champions Plymouth Argyle (101 points) and runners-up Ipswich Town (98 points), recent history suggests Wrexham are well placed to push on in the new year.

Discounting the 2019-20 season that was curtailed by the Covid pandemic, an analysis of the past decade in League One shows that the average points tally for the team finishing second stands at 90.66 points.

Perhaps more pertinently, the average total required to finish ahead of the third-placed team and thus be promoted across those same 10 years is 87.

As for the play-offs, the average points tally required to extend the League One season over the past decade — and, again, after discounting the Covid-shortened 2019-20 — is 74.4 points.

The big outliers to that mean figure are the 83 points required by Wycombe in 2021-22 and the 69 that were enough to seal sixth place for Chesterfield in 2014-15.

As for Wrexham’s push for a third consecutive promotion, there’s little doubt how important their home form has been. A return of 11 wins and 35 points from 13 outings at the SToK Cae Ras is remarkable.

It’s the best record in the EFL, with Championship high-flyers Leeds United the next best-performing in front of their own fans this season after taking 31 points from 12 matches at Elland Road. In League One, Reading and Birmingham are Wrexham’s closest rivals for consistency on home soil with 27 points from a possible 33.

In contrast, 10 away games have yielded just 13 points, a distinctly mid-table return. With 13 of Wrexham’s remaining 23 fixtures being on the road — including visits to four of the top seven in Wycombe, Huddersfield, Reading and Barnsley, the latter on New Year’s Day — this return needs to improve.

The disparity in away fixtures perhaps partly explains why Opta’s supercomputer does not rate Wrexham’s hopes of finishing in the top two very highly.

Even after racking up more than two points per game in the first half of the season, Opta — by factoring in variables including the quality of recent performances, upcoming fixtures, historical results and their own power rankings — is predicting the Welsh club will finish on 82.23 points. This would be the fourth-highest total behind Huddersfield (82.98 points), Wycombe (91.1) and Birmingham (98.25), according to the supercomputer.

Delving further into Opta’s computer forecast, they rate Wrexham’s chances of lifting the League One title as just 1.44 per cent, while promotion via the automatic route is put at 12.28 per cent.

To put this into context, Birmingham are given a 76.04 per cent chance of finishing top (Wycombe 20.06 per cent) and a 95.4 per cent chance of winning automatic promotion (Wycombe 74 per cent).

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As for the play-offs, Opta suggests Wrexham as the most likely to go up via this route at 80.1 per cent, just ahead of Huddersfield (77.24 per cent) and then Bolton Wanderers (51.1 per cent). Reading are tipped to complete the quartet of teams competing in the end-of-season promotion deciders, again according to Opta’s simulation of the remaining fixtures.

Only time will tell, of course. For now, Parkinson can be hugely satisfied with not only his side’s first half of the season but also their ability to prevail even when not at their best, as they did against Wigan thanks to Fletcher.

“It’s always believing,” said the Wrexham manager when asked what has been key to such an impressive return to League One. “I was watching the Sir Alex (Ferguson) documentary yesterday and how Manchester United always went right to the wire.

“We’ve got that mentality here. We go to the end and we always believe we can get a goal.”

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(Top photo: Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney during their loss to Birmingham in September; by Alex Pantling via Getty Images)