Wrexham aims to keep alive Premier League dream by securing playoff spot in Championship finale

For Wrexham’s growing global fanbase, it’s set to be another heart-stopping end to the season.

This time, a place in the Premier League is at stake.

“I think a defibrillator is the traditional fifth season gift? Would make sense for this show,” Ryan Reynolds, the Hollywood celebrity who is a co-owner of the club, wrote on X in a nod to the “Welcome to Wrexham” series that has documented the team’s unprecedented journey up English soccer’s league pyramid.

The final step is the biggest one, though.

On Saturday, Wrexham heads into the final round of regular-season games in the second-tier Championship aiming to secure a place in the playoffs that will determine the last promotion spot to the Premier League.

The top two teams go up automatically — one of them is sure to be Coventry, which will finish first — and the teams finishing third to sixth will advance to the playoffs. With one match left, Wrexham is in sixth place.

That last playoff spot is a three-way contest between Wrexham, Hull (in seventh place, behind Wrexham on goal difference) and Derby (in eighth place, one point further back).

Wrexham has the toughest game — at home to fourth-place Middlesbrough, which needs to win to stand a chance of finishing in second spot.

Hull hosts ninth-place Norwich and Derby is at home to 15th-place Sheffield United.

Wrexham is already assured of the highest finish in its 162-year history — its previous best was 15th in the second tier in the 1978–79 season — but still possible is a fourth straight promotion that would be beyond the owners’ wildest dreams.

Three promotions in a row had never been done before in English soccer. So Wrexham, a club on so many people’s lips owing to its remarkable rise since being bought by Reynolds and Rob Mac (formerly McElhenney) in 2021, is well ahead of schedule.

“At the start of the season,” Wrexham midfielder Ollie Rathbone said, “everyone would have taken this scenario.”

All 12 of the matches in the Championship’s last round kick off at the same time.

It’s also a huge, if not decisive, round in the Premier League for both the title race and battle to avoid relegation.

Arsenal — seeking to be English champion for the first time since 2004 — leads by three points from second-place Manchester City, which has a game in hand. Arsenal hosts Fulham on Saturday and City visits Everton on Monday night.

At the other end of the standings, third-from-last Tottenham — a top-flight team since 1978 — is in the relegation zone with four games left. Its next match is at Aston Villa on Sunday. Tottenham is two points behind West Ham, which visits Brentford on Saturday, and five points behind Nottingham Forest, which visits Chelsea on Monday.

Also notable is Manchester United’s home game against rival Liverpool on Sunday. They are in third and fourth place, respectively, and both are bidding to tie up Champions League qualification.

It remains to be seen for how long Liverpool winger Mohamed Salah, who is leaving the club at the end of the season after nine years, will be sidelined after sustaining a hamstring injury last weekend.

Man City will be hoping Rodri is available to return from a muscle injury after missing the team’s last two games.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer