Southampton vs. Wrexham live stream: Where to watch first Championship match online, TV channel, start time
The script rather writes itself. A devastating setback at the end of Act One, followed by a rise of historic proportions. After an elongated Act Two, the promised land is in sight and, with it, the most dramatically satisfying end point for this folklore tale. Surely it couldn't all grind to a halt now, could it?
Unfortunately, commentators up and down the land will be the first to tell you that football is not an easy bedfellow for script writers. This sport is not going to bend to the wills of its most high-profile documentary stars. For this year, at least, Wrexham will have to settle for the threepeat of promotions.
That in and of itself is a remarkable feat. Other clubs in the English footballing pyramid have been promoted back to back to back but none from such a high starting point (the National League in 2023, a year after a 5-4 home defeat to Grimsby in the play-off semifinals). Over three years Phil Parkinson's side delivered a league record 87 wins, 30 draws and just 21 losses. Parkinson himself noted on Thursday that there have been "periods where people start questioning me as a manager, questioning the players" but even that does not really dull the sense that this has been three years of uninterrupted success.
That shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Once Ryan Reynolds and the artist formerly known as Rob McElhenney bought in and deployed their sizeable contacts books, Wrexham found themselves playing with budgets that dwarfed the rest of the National League and League Two. Even at League One level, there was one club backed by commercial tie-ins with Meta, United Airlines and Marks and Spencer's. It is fair to assume those are adding a bit more to the budget than a teeth whitening company, local property developers or the makers of Branston Pickle.
For all their rapid rise, Wrexham were never a club living beyond their means -- their ratio of wages to turnover was an impressive 41%. As much as a footballing triumph, theirs has been one of branding and revenue generation. Bloomberg recently estimated that the Dragons could be on course for $67 million in revenue for last season.
Wrexham had money to burn and a clear blueprint for recruitment. Whatever league they were in, they were signings players who were just about good enough to play in the division above. Take last season, when Jay Rodriguez was snared from Burnley, Matty James arrived after three years starting in the Championship and $2.7 million was dropped on striker Sam Smith, a consistent scorer in League One. In League Two alone, the last period for which we have published accounts, the wage bill was running at nearly $15 million a year.
That is the sort of money that allows you to blitz the field in the fourth and even the third tier. When you get up to the Championship? Forget about it. Saturday's opponents Southampton had a wage bill of $108.8 million when they secured their return back to the Premier League in 2023-24. Wrexham's will naturally have swollen from its peak in League Two but even a generous estimate for how much they're spending would have them a fair way beyond the big boys.
Of course you don't have to have the biggest wage bill for success in the Championship. Part of the reason that Wrexham fans can dream of going four in a row is that they've seen the jump from League One to Premier League done quite recently by Ipswich, who were playing top flight football a little over 15 months after they secured promotion to the second tier with a 6-0 win over Exeter City.
Ipswich were, it should be noted, the first team to go back to back since Southampton in 2012, Norwich City the only other team to have achieved that feat this century. For most good sides coming up from League One, a season of stability is nothing to be sniffed at. Only the extraordinary get near the summit again. Ipswich were just that with their goal difference of plus 66 from 46 games. Southampton, three future England internationals in their ranks, even more so.
By contrast, Wrexham look rather ordinary. They might have ended up second in the table but their non-penalty expected goal difference was only the eighth best in the division. At both ends of the pitch they had players significantly overperforming the value of the shots they were taking or facing, Oliver Rathbone scoring eight goals from 4.42 xG, Arthur Okonkwo conceding only 23 from shots worth 27.7 post-shot xG. Even if there was something particularly special about Parkinson's players at that level, why should it carry forward when they run into the likes of Ipswich, Coventry and Southampton?
After all, on the eve of this season this squad is only just beginning to shake off the appearance of one built for the upper reaches of League One. Convincing big names to drop down to Leagues Two and One required generous wages, the sort that make them hard to shift as Wrexham look to strengthen for the second tier. Few have followed club great Paul Mullin, who joined Wigan on loan, but Parkinson is insistent that more will have to go.
"There's a lot of players who have enjoyed being a part of this club and rightly so," he said. "But they know for their own careers they need to play. If we feel that the time is right for that to happen, then we'll help it happen and get them a club where we feel it's going to be beneficial for them."
Is the talent there?Parkinson acknowledged that he too could come under the crosshairs, no wonder given he has a rather sketchy track record in the second tier. None of Hull City, Charlton or Bolton were particular big beasts when they had Parkinson at the helm but 26 wins, 27 draws and 78 losses, averaging out at 0.8 points per game, is a paltry return.
Still, he is being afforded talent to work with. Transfer records have been broke first on Empoli's Liberato Cacace, who could be key as a wing back in Parkinson's back-three system, and then Lewis O'Brien, a high grade operator at the Championship level. That is how you would also describe Kieffer Moore and Josh Windass while Conor Coady is, at best, on the very cusp of that archetype mentioned above of a player able to perform a division higher up. Add them to players such as Okonkwo and Lewis Brunt, who will need others to instruct them on life in the Championship, and there is a good chance the worst case scenarios are mitigated against.
The dream outcome though? That requires pretty exceptional recruitment at the very least. Christian Eriksen is interested, a few players on that level and maybe there's the technical quality for a top six finish. The blueprint will be a few more moves a la Mullin's arrival in 2021 when a League One standard striker kept seeing potential suitors go for the other guy until it just made sense to head to the Racecourse Ground. Danny Ings, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Jamie Vardy: there are plenty of big names out there waiting for a club to come to them.
Suppose the recruitment works, suppose the manager gets the division this time around: this still has to coalesce into a side that can dramatically overperform its talent and wage levels just to get into the mix for the playoff spots. Whatever your view of Wrexham's approach, it is impossible to argue that they have been a team who has done that. An unkind view of this club might be something of a sportswashing-lite Manchester City for the lower reaches of the English game, a team that has had the most resources and has deployed them shrewdly in pursuit of their goals.
This season, they simply don't. And without that Wrexham will have to keep waiting on that perfect end point to their story.
How to watch Southampton vs. Wrexham, odds- Date: Saturday, August 8 | Time: 7:30 a.m. ET
- Location: St. Mary's Stadium -- Southampton, England
- Live stream: CBS Sports Golazo Network
- Odds: Southampton -135; Draw +280; Wrexham +390
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