Two reflections on Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s Wrexham winning promotion to England’s fourth division:

1) The jeopardy of their promotion was real and intense. Had Wrexham missed out on automatic promotion, they would have only had a 6-in-10 chance of promotion through the playoffs (a danger now faced by Notts County). A desire for drama can create unfairness; the balance in the National League may tilt too far to the former.

2) The bottleneck caused by just two promotion places means Wrexham have been EFL-ready for a long time. We expect them to be second-favourites in League Two next year. The current structure creates competitive imbalance and incentives to overspend to escape the bottleneck; these are issues that need addressing.

By Omar Chaudhuri
Chief Intelligence Officer