Wrexham and Birmingham Go Up
Two Clubs, Divergent Paths in 25/26 Championship
This is a special Under The Knife piece, written by Jonathan Kiersky, the creator of PIRlo, and Will Carroll. We hope you enjoy.
Birmingham City and Wrexham are headed to the Championship. That’s the headline in some circles, it’s a feel-good moment, a capstone to two stories told in wildly different accents. But headlines fade quickly in the second tier of English football, where sentiment doesn’t win matches and fairy tales often get relegated.
What happens now is the real story because the Championship isn’t a destination, it’s a test. It's 46 games of attrition, identity crises, and away days in midweek fog. For clubs that just got here, it’s less about celebration and more about evolution. If you don’t evolve fast, you die slow.
Birmingham and Wrexham, for all their surface-level similarities (both promoted, both with flashy backers, both with rabid fanbases), could not be more different in structure, strategy, or trajectory. One is a former Premier League club with money, muscle, and a CEO who’s built this exact machine before. The other is a Welsh side with a Hollywood glow and a stadium that would look small in the second division of most European leagues.
They share a tier and a result. That’s about all they share.
Birmingham City is acting like a club that’s been here before and plans to move past it fast. Tom Wagner didn’t buy in for the vibes. He’s a specialist in distressed assets, a Wall Street operator who knows exactly how to spot undervalued potential and rebuild it at scale. That’s what Knighthead Capital does. That’s what Wagner saw in Birmingham, a club with a broken stadium, fractured leadership, and an under-leveraged fanbase in one of the country’s biggest markets. There’s room enough for Aston Villa to have a rival.
To Wagner, it wasn’t a fixer-upper — it was an arbitrage opportunity. He installed Garry Cook, the same executive who helped architect Manchester City’s transition from chaos to contender. He greenlit a massive new stadium project. He cleared out deadwood, modernized operations, and backed it with cash. This isn’t theory. This is his playbook. It just happens to be football this time. He even gave it his own storyline by adding Tom Brady to the boardroom.
There are some questions about the infinitely-questionable PSR rules in terms of how much Wagner and Birmingham City can actually spend. That other City team has called into question how much owner loans have tipped things in the Prem, so there may be some limit if they can’t find enough sponsors willing to overspend on shirts and other rights.
Wrexham, meanwhile, feels like a different genre entirely. No hedge fund. No grand facilities plan. What they’ve done is almost as impressive, but it plays out like a different sport. They’ve weaponized charm. They’ve created a global audience with a docuseries and two actors who genuinely care. But the question isn’t whether they’re beloved — it’s whether they’re sustainable.
There is a change that hasn’t been noticed, but could be the most significant part for Wrexham. Eric Allyn sold his family’s medical equipment company for a couple billion and came in as the big money that Wrexham had lacked. Syracuse, NY might seem a bit like Wrexham in ways, but there’s still room to make this not just a showcase for Allyn, but a positive investment. It will take money to grow and a jump to the Premier League would take even more, but if rumors are true that Allyn could fund the quadrupling of Wrexham’s wage bill, it makes things more realistic.
Their rise has been rapid, but their infrastructure hasn’t caught up. The Racecourse Ground is historic but tired. They’ve been promoted three times in the time it took to get planning permission, let alone what would have been good to have in League One. The Championship is an even bigger step, with the planned expansion to 16,000 getting them just above half the size of the league average capacity. Their squad is older than people realize. Their financials, even with the streaming glow and new investment, don’t suggest a club ready to splash eight figures on survival.
Both clubs have momentum. Only one has a balance sheet that scares people. The Championship doesn’t care about the past or the story. It only cares what comes next.
The question inside English football throughout the past few years, in regards to Wrexham, was always this jump — the one from League One to the Championship. What was once considered the biggest leap in English football, has now been surpassed by the jump from the Championship to the Premier League with the ever widening gap in finances between the Championship and the Prem. The Wrexham ownership group came in and could outspend most other League Two sides. They could still accomplish that in League One, but a much smaller fraction as they have probably the third largest coffers in terms of League One ownership groups behind Birmingham and Wycombe.
That said, the Wrexham story isn’t simply Hollywood money or a docuseries - they’ve made wise decisions, listened to not only the fans but also the people who know what they are doing, and built a very healthy club. Now that they are two matches from automatic promotion, we can start to look at their outlook in the second tier of English football.
Birmingham City is a case study in how to ruin a very successful club. Much like Sunderland to the Northeast, Birmingham City is an iconic club in English football that was run into the ground by apathy at best, malpractice at worst. They were regular operators in the top flight of English football and then were shown the door to the third division. Poor ownership, which always begets poor decisions both in the boardroom and on the pitch, led to this sleeping giant to become an afterthought. So what happens when you combine high quality ownership with a brilliant front office setup and the cash to execute your vision? You start to scare those clubs around you. And currently, that’s what Birmingham City is doing within the ranks of English football.
While we have explained that both clubs share a promotion to the EFL, their paths and strategies couldn’t be more opposite. Wrexham built a side two years ago capable of dominating League Two, they built a side last season that looked for promotion at the first ask, and now they need to build a squad that allows them a healthy return of points in the Championship.
There wasn’t a bold strategy looking ahead to a Premier League push in the 25/26 season. We will delve into some data but let’s put this in perspective: Wrexham spend 4.96M GBP on players transferred in the 24/25 season, Birmingham City spent 3 times that figure (15M GBP) on one transfer. Wrexham has six players becoming free agents after the 2025 season; Birmingham City have three.
For Birmingham City, unlike Wrexham, they want the Championship to be a quick layover. This was always the plan and they started building that plan in the summer of 2024. Besides laying an English League One record transfer fee of 15M quid, they spent an extra 20M GBP on other transfers. There is a saying that you can buy your way out of League One, but not the Championship. Leicester City bought their way out of the Championship last term but we all saw how that worked out because they committed themselves to players that were tweeners (players who would win you the Championship but would be bench players on any Prem club not facing relegation and here’s Leicester, looking at a reverse boomerang and the loss of an icon.) Birmingham City took a different tact. They are identifying players they think can help them win the Championship that can also fund their next set of purchases if/when they go to the Prem.
Americans look at Wrexham and swoon. They (rightfully) love the docuseries. They love Mr. Deadpool and Mr. Sunny. It’s a fantastic story. There are just some realities and roadblocks that stand in the way of the ultimate goal. Americans just realized, outside of the hardcores, that Birmingham had a club. Thanks to Tom Brady, people on this side of the pond have noticed, kinda sorta. And yet, City have a real opportunity to go sit at the table that they rightfully clamor for. They have the structure. They have the stadium plans. They have the money. In the race to the Premier League, it’s David and Goliath. It’d be cool to see David (Wrexham) go up but they have too much work for that to happen just yet. Goliath? They have all the tools.
On average, newly promoted teams bring in 8 to 10 new players in their first Championship season. That number sounds like a rebuild, but it's often more of a controlled burn. Of those signings, only three or four typically become regular starters. The rest are depth, lottery tickets, or insurance policies. What you keep matters more than what you add. That’s the trick: fix the holes without ripping out the foundation.
Wrexham might have the most recognizable badge in the Football League right now, but they don’t have a Championship budget—at least not yet. Birmingham, meanwhile, might not have a global docuseries or Deadpool tweeting about their left back, but they’ve got the thing that actually matters: financial leverage and infrastructure momentum.
In this league, that wins.
The idea that you can stream your way up the table is seductive but it’s not proven. The Championship is a cruel validator. Every season, parachute payments warp the ecosystem. Relegated Premier League clubs come down with £50–100 million in hand and wage bills that dwarf what Wrexham has ever paid. Staying up isn’t about ambition, but margin.
Birmingham City has that margin. Wagner’s not just investing in players — he’s pouring money into data systems, recruitment networks, commercial restructuring, facilities. That’s not romantic, but it’s how Brentford made the leap. That’s not an accident; it’s a business plan. You build an edge into the model, not the moment.
Even if Birmingham gets recruitment wrong, they can buy themselves out of trouble. They have cushion. They can pivot in January. They can outbid five other clubs for a backup striker if they have to. That’s what financial muscle looks like.
Wrexham? They don’t have that safety net. Not yet. And unless they bring in another investor or drastically ramp up matchday revenue — tough when your stadium seats 13,000 on a good day — they’re going to have to be perfect in how they allocate funds. They can’t miss on a marquee signing. They can’t burn £400k on a left back who doesn’t pan out. They need to find free agents with gas left in the tank or land loan deals from Premier League academies who don’t just want game time, but thrive under pressure.
Their cultural capital is real. It's valuable. But it's not liquidity. It doesn’t pay transfer fees, and it doesn’t cover the gap when a six-figure signing underperforms.
Wrexham’s story sells. Birmingham’s system wins. This is the part of the Championship where stories bend and sometimes break. The clubs that survive are the ones that understand the difference and make better decisions.
So let’s look at those decisions and use our exclusive PIRLO system to point out some targets that both teams should be looking at to fill their gaps, fitting both their systems, their cultures, and their budgets.
The overarching question is what to expect for both these clubs. While we’ve spilled ink on both these clubs traveling down the same path, this is where their respective paths diverge. We will use two metrics to give a clear picture of the expectations of both- PIRlo’s league translation formula and ELO (elofootball.com).
As you might expect, with their record setting work for a League One club in the transfer market, Birmingham have their sights set high. We don’t know the exact additions they will make until the close of the summer window, we can surmise based on their player translations from League One to the Championship, Birmingham will address some needs on the offensive end of the pitch. Defensively, they purchased Championship caliber players. In the middle of the pitch, they have the talent to compete. Birmingham City isn’t just looking to compete, though.
As they are currently constructed, Birmingham’s outlook is quite favorable. Per PIRlo’s translations, City is projected for 7th place in the 2025/26 Championship. ELO values City as the same level as Sunderland, placing them as a projected 5th place club. With added firepower up front, City has a real chance to pull an Ipswich Town and jump from League One to the Prem in back to back seasons. It wouldn’t be a shock to see City splash out hefty sums on a Striker, a #10 (attacking midfielder), and a #6 (defensive midfielder) which are projected to be their weakest links in the Championship. Let’s take a look at three players that could drastically alter Birmingham’s 25/26 outlook.
First things first - after breaking the League One transfer record on a Striker, Birmingham spins that record one more time. They look to Genk in Belgium and purchase Nigerian international striker Tolu Arokodare. The current Belgian Pro League leader in goals scored and wanted throughout Europe, Tolu would cost City around £20 million plus add ons, breaking Burnley’s Championship record purchase of Mike Tresor two years ago by £4 million. Tulo is as good a bet as any to pace the Championship in goals, maybe by a wide margin. Physically built for the rigors of English football, Tolu is a purchase for the now (winning the league) and for the future (he could double his transfer fee with one great season in the Championship). An expensive yet ideal signing.
To address a relative weakness at the #10 position, Birmingham head north from Belgium into the Eredivisie and buy versatile midfielder Michel Vlap of FC Twente. Playing both as a center midfielder and an attacking midfielder for the Dutch outfit this season, Vlap’s translation to the Championship is nothing short of sterling. Vlap is projected to be 25/26’s #1 overall player in the Championship, per PIRlo translations. Simply signing Vlap and no one else would see Birmingham’s projections leap into a virtual tie with Sunderland in 5th place and firmly in the playoffs. He’d be a massive upgrade to any Championship club at a fraction of his projected cost.
Lastly, an upgrade at defensive midfield. We keep City in the Championship, buying Hayden Hackney of Middlesbrough. The England U21 international, dubbed the next Michael Carrick by a vocal section of the Manchester United YouTube faithful, was the #9 overall rated player in the 24/25 Championship, per PIRlo, and the top defensive midfielder. Middlesbrough will rightly ask for close to £10 million for their star man. Birmingham should pay that fee, gladly. At 22 years old, he’s a potential metronome in the middle of the pitch in City royal blue for years to come.
Birmingham City goes out and splashes the estimated £34 million in transfer fees and, guess what, only Leeds United would have a rosier league outlook in 25/26. Since Leeds is Premier League bound, and we won’t run projections for the relegated trio until we have a clearer picture of their outgoings and incomings, Birmingham City will have the highest projection in the Championship going into the 2025/26 season. Best part? They’ve stayed true to their transfer ethos- buying players that can not only win now, but also win in a division above their current league. Would there be PSR concerns? Of course. But the players mentioned above all also have massive resale value, severely limiting Birmingham City’s exposure to a second inquiry into their books over the past few years. And hey, if these three players bring City back to the Premier League? Its mission accomplished, financials be damned.
The other side of our divergent path finds Wrexham. The real question has always been when Wrexham got to this level would the purse strings get loosened. Or, maybe a better question is, do the owners have the capital to play at this level and make a promotion push. So far, the answer is no. We don’t know what new investment will bring in terms of cash piles. We do know they have a really good front office team that has consistently shown they are capable of understanding their levels and have made signings based on the now, unlike Birmingham who have had one eye on the future with their recruitment last summer. As Wrexham are currently constructed, they have some work to do if they plan on staying up in the Championship.
PIRlo’s projections of the current Wrexham roster translated to the Championship show a side that projects as the 17th best team in 25/26. Being that low opens a club up to issues when factoring in injuries. ELO is less rosy than PIRlo, placing them as the 23rd ranked Championship club currently. That’s boomerang territory. With upgrades needed up front, the guess is that we will see Wrexham take the same approach they have in the two previous seasons and look to purchase or sign players who will keep them in the league, consolidate this season and look to make their way up the table in the following years while dealing with a tricky stadium situation.
Knowing that Birmingham City is going to purchase at the top end of the market, let’s take a look at which players would PIRlo suggest Wrexham sign to maximize their chances of staying in the Championship knowing that there is investment coming down the pike and the media rights money greatly increases with their move up one tier.
The first call should be to the attacking midfielder Emiliano Marcondes, formerly of Norwich City. Marcondes signed late in October of 2024 and immediately paid dividends. Marcondes was a top 25 player, per PIRlo, in The Championship in 2024/25 and will become a free agent at season’s end. He raises Wrexham’s floor by two places in PIRlo’s current projected 2025/26 Championship xStandings and he has experience playing across both the midfield and the front line positions. He’s a definite upgrade across the roster and has extensive Championship experience. Priority signing.
Since Wrexham’s defense was built with promotion in mind and said unit was by far the bedrock of the club as they trounced through League One, let’s add a bit more firepower to the attacking corps. Wrexham has had a history in the Reynolds/ McIlhenney era to buy from superior leagues in the English pyramid system but instead of buying from the Prem, let’s head to the German Bundesliga and sign Marvin Ducksch. The twice capped German international has been in fine form (36 goal involvements over the past two seasons), has physicality, and scores goals. Convincing him could be a stretch and he would be the highest earner at the club, but his signing would show massive intent and the German would significantly increase the odds of Wrexham going into their inaugural Championship season with a top 10 league table projection, per PIRlo.
Honorable mention: Santiago Colombatto. The Club Leon owned, Real Oviedo player has been a monster in Spain’s second tier with scouts in Spain claiming he’s a player for the Top 5 leagues. His PIRlo profile suggests they might be onto something as through the first half of the Segunda season, he was the clear cut frontrunner for Player of the Year. Colombatto stars as a playmaking defensive midfielder, something currently lacking in the Wrexham side, while also being able to play at a high level in a #8 or #10 role. Like Marcondes, Colombatto would raise Wrexham’s floor by two positions in the xStandings.
For our look at targets that would appear to be out of Wrexham’s financial might or just seem bonkers, we texted some European scouts not based in England. Every single scout sent back some variation of “It’s gotta be Vardy, right?” So we asked them to dive a bit deeper. The one transfer that was laughed off initially and then sort of started warming up to as a completely crazy idea was Raheem Sterling. Yeah, the wages are super high but there’s some level of thinking that Raheem could go back to playing for fun, would immediately make Wrexham a legitimate promotion threat, and pave the way to a move to MLS.
But that’s not the player that makes the most sense. That player is none other than Gio Reyna. The MLS-linked USMNT player seems like a weird fit until you look at his fellow USMNT player Josh Sargent’s career arc. Both went to big German clubs at young ages. Both players didn’t find massive success at Werder and Dortmund. Neither found success in the Prem. Sargent got relegated with Norwich and has found incredible success in the Championship (just named to the Best XI). Could a move to Wrexham reinvigorate the mercurial attackers career? It certainly seems like it and Reyna could be the fulcrum of the Wrexham attack while endearing himself to all the USMNT fans watching “We Are Wrexham” in the States.
We’ll leave you with one so far out in left field, we’ll forgive you if you think we were knee deep in a bottle of Uncle Nearest when we came up with it. But, on some levels it could make sense. Bring in Paul Pogba. No need to extol his considerable virtues. He would be the greatest player to grace The Championship and would pull all the strings for the Welsh club. For no other reason than wanting to see that mega-watt smile again and witness one of the true midfield wrecking balls of this generation dominate the Racecourse pitch, do it Wrexham. Let’s get weird.
It shouldn’t be understated how much both of these clubs mean to American soccer. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have bought a club that virtually no American had ever heard of and turned it not only into a commercial sensation but also a sporting success, no easy feat that. While Birmingham City finally has an owner who understands not only the history of the club but also the financial might of Birmingham City. As we’ve discussed throughout this piece, outside of the US connections and the promotion to the same league in the same year, these two clubs are about to take vastly different paths in 25/26 and a lot of where they project to land will depend on their transfer business this summer.
There is another side to squad-building and that’s the inevitable and needed sell side. Some players simply aren’t good enough, or are forced out as quality comes in. That’s definitely the case for both teams, but for Wrexham, it could be culture breaking. Phil Parkinson has built one of the most cohesive squads in full view. Some say because of it. However, in making a Disney movie out of a football club, the risk is that someone is going to have to shoot Ol Yeller.
It’s clear that Paul Mullin is going to be a tipping point. He’s a local boy made good. A player that has become iconic on and off the pitch. His work for autism alone has him as a fan favorite, but his goals largely helped Wrexham make their first big steps. We’ve seen at the end of this League One campaign that Mullin being left out of the promotion push is preparing everyone for the coming reality. Mullin could be sold back down to a place he could play, especially with several teams looking for their own Wrexham-like push with new ownership.
As well, we’ve seen longtime Wrexhamites like Jordan Davies loaned out and Mark Howard about to be out of contract. Wrexham’s management will have to balance the need to upgrade the talent with acknowledging their contributions to this historic run and figuring out how to integrate some more mercenary talent into the next season of the docuseries at the same time as integrating them into the team. Story might matter as much as wins.
The clamor around Birmingham City’s transfer plans have seemingly taken a different variation depending on the day and who you listen to. A few days ago, it was reported that City might be facing some form of PSR issues. On Wednesday, the EFL officials met and hammered out a deal that on the face of it looks to tackle the issue of both Premier League Parachute Payment clubs and the very new issue of League One clubs progressing to the Championship with heaps of cash. As of April 30th, it seems all systems are a go for City and Wrexham to spend. Still, City has some squad overhaul to work on.
Birmingham City is looking at roughly £15-20M quid in salary to play with this summer if the various punditry are to be believed. To put that into some form of context, the highest earner in the Championship clocks in at a shade under £4M per season and only four players top the £3M mark, per Capology. Birmingham has money to upgrade the squad all over the pitch.
Of the £16M they had on the books last season, eight BCFC players totaling roughly £3.5M in salary will be departing in the form of expiring loan deals and contracts running out. Will they sell? As we outlined above, it doesn’t seem as though they need to do much in the sales department because they spent historic money on obvious Championship level players in the summer of 2024. City didn’t cram for the final exam. They’ve been studying for the exam and executing that plan for the better part of 18 months. This is what smart clubs do.
Birmingham have positioned themselves to make signings that will move the needle in a significant fashion this summer. On the win/ points curve, where each win/ point has vastly increased value to a club like Birmingham, City reside in a place where every upgrade will have a significant potential uptick on their final table position. With a squad already projected, per PIRlo, in the top half of the table, match altering signings will see Birmingham City rival the Southamptons and Ipswichs for promotion.
On the incoming side, CM Taylor Gardner-Hickman’s (£500K/ season) loan deal has made permanent and they already struck a free agent deal with CB Phil Neumann (reportedly £1M/ season) from Hannover 96. With the ability to rival the Premier League relegated clubs with their Parachute Payments (£49M in 2024) on the salary front, City can, and will, go after club altering talent.
This may be the only season both clubs start on relatively even footing with the pack. Blink and they could be back in League One. Or if they get this right, they could be facing Premier League giants in 2026.
Because the truth is, the Championship doesn’t wait for you to settle. It exposes hesitation. Stabilizing might feel like success, but in this league, standing still is just the first step toward falling back.
For Birmingham, this feels like part of a plan. You can see the scaffolding, the structure, the long arc. For Wrexham, it feels like a moment. Moments, no matter how magical, pass. The question isn’t just whether they can survive. It’s whether they can stretch this into something lasting, something that doesn’t vanish the moment the credits fade or the results turn.
There are a dozen clubs every year who come up and freeze, staring down a league that chews through budgets and reputations. The ones who survive don’t play it safe. They commit. They adapt. They take risks with consequences. This isn’t a league you ride out. It’s one you try to escape before it figures you out.
Want a bonus? Keep your eye on the League One playoffs. Leyton Orient was just bought by a newly minted American billionaire, while Stockport County has come up from the National League even faster than Wrexham, despite no one noticing and none of the cash influx. Wycombe? They’re angry they got passed by Wrexham and could be angrier if they’re left behind. One of these could go up and make the storyline even more interesting in the second division.