Wrexham executive director Humphrey Ker believes the days of the club having to pay a transfer premium are now over.
The Red Dragons sealed a return to the Football League on Saturday night, with their 3-1 win over Boreham Wood wrapping up the National League title. It also helped put a full stop on the first chapter of the Hollywood story being played out at the Racecourse Ground.
The club’s A-list owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney were in attendance at the weekend and were firmly amongst the wild post-match celebrations. But it was quickly back to reality for the popular owners, with attention quickly turning to how they will fare back in League Two.
Last year’s National League champions Stockport County are on the verge of a second successive promotion and that kind of expectation has already been placed upon Phil Parkinson’s side.
The Wrexham manager has already revealed that talks are planned for this week over their potential transfer strategy, with Reynolds and McElhenney not shy with putting their hands in the pocket.
Wrexham drafted in a host of players that had been plying their trade at a higher level, including top goalscorer Paul Mullin, who joined from Cambridge United in 2021. And Ker has admitted that due to their standing, there were times they were forced to pay a little bit extra to get players through the door - something which he doesn’t envision being an issue moving forward.
"Our mission will always be to try and get the best players we possibly can for each situation," Ker told BBC Radio Wales.
"I think previously we've had to pay a bit of a premium to get players to come down to the National League because of the stigma that surrounds non-League or Conference football, however you want to describe it, and as we go up we'll have less of a challenge in attracting people.
"I know that Phil [manager Parkinson] and Les Read, who's been helping us as well on the recruitment side, are just inundated with incoming calls from players because this is a place that people want to come and play football."
He added: "The interest in this club is astronomical and we believe that the squad that we have right now, we have a very strong chance of going up again next year.
"It gets more challenging the further up the pyramid we go, but we have real faith and confidence in the people we've got in the football club to take us in the right direction.
"We want to do this again, we want to be having these parties next year and as many summers after that as we can possibly manage."
Reynolds and McElhenney won’t have long to bask in the glory of last week’s achievements, with Parkinson laying the groundwork for the talks that need to take place in the coming days. "We'll speak to the owners about what we feel we need to improve going forward," he said on Sunday.
“We'll touch base again towards the end of the week on that. We've got a strong squad that we will have to improve but not by a lot. We'll be looking straight away at players and how the transfer market is looking of course.”
