Welcome to Wrexham season 1 episode 4 recap: Home Opener
The fourth episode of the FX sports documentary Welcome to Wrexham, begins with the Wrexham Red Dragons in a match against Notts Country. This is the debut home game of superstar forward player, Paul Mullin.
He delivers some very good chances to score, as well as getting a header goal in. Despite his exemplary performance and a valiant effort by the Dragons, the game ends in a 1-1 tie.
Co-owners Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds are definitely not ready for the home games of the season. Especially since the last time they redid the football pitch (read: field), it looked ok.
Head groundsman Paul Chaloner expresses his dismay that the pitch has not withstood the test and is now torn up after playing just one game.
Welcome to Wrexham season 1 episode 4 recap: Costs twice, but very nice
The failure of the first home game of the new owners’ era and the dismal state of the pitch don’t bode well for the rest of the season. In Los Angeles, Ryan and Rob listen to Humphrey Ker give them the bad news about the state of the Wrexham Racecourse pitch.
Laying down a new top layer will cost them an excess of 100,000 pounds sterling. An expert they consulted said that, to hold the soil and top grass together, they need to overwater it every day.
Rob and Ryan engage in TikTok and social media shenanigans to increase the exposure of the club and the team. Ryan beats Rob’s socials following by millions.
In Wrexham, supporters buy shirts and merch from the stadium gift shop. Sales have gone up to 50,000 pounds sterling from a normal year of sales at just 3,000.
Some seniors try TikTok for the first time, since the company is one of the sponsors of the team. All this while Rob and Ryan do plenty of media exposure and guestings to improve the exposure of the team.
Welcome to Wrexham season 1 episode 4 recap: Super Paul Mullin
At the Wrexham players housing, we learn that five players share one, tiny two-story house rental in town. They gripe about the low paychecks they receive and about how much superstar forward acquisition Paul Mullin must be paid.
They surmise an exorbitant amount but have heard only rumors. At his house 30 minutes away from Wrexham, Paul Mullin spends time with his family, who joke that the Premier League was overrated anyway and that they’re all Wrexham loyalists now.
Paul explains that his decision to play for a low-level team like Wrexham, despite all the noise and rumors about money to the contrary, was mainly done to be close to his family. Especially since he has a two-year-old boy named Albie he wants to be with as much as possible.
The new pitch for the Racecourse grounds is laid down. It ended up costing Rob and Ryan around 200,000 pounds sterling.
The total for both pitch redos now total USD364,000. The five players who are also house mates take a day off to play at the golf course.
They gripe how getting out of the National League where Wrexham is at has always been a difficult endeavor. Board Advisor Shaun Harvey explains the promotion rules for teams.
A win will get a team 3 points, while a draw will get 1 point with the team able to play a season’s 44 games. If a team has the most points at the end of the season, they are hailed as the champion club and are promoted to the English Football League or EFL.
Welcome to Wrexham season 1 episode 4 recap: A grand losing streak
Wrexham Red Dragons play the Southend United but the game ends up at a draw of 2-2. This still leaves the team on number seven in the rankings.
Then they play versus Grimsby Town and lose with a dismal score of 3-1 for Grimsby. Wrexham versus Stockport isn’t any better as Stockport wins at a 2-1.
At this point, the Red Dragons have now dropped to an embarrassing 12th place in the rankings. The posts on social media reflect the disappointment and frustration of the losing streak by the Wrexham fans and supporters.
As Rob and Ryan commiserate on the team’s losses and comment that the new pitch they’ve laid down that cost them twice as much, at least looks nice.
Welcome to Wrexham season 1 episode 4 recap: Review
Sports movies always have those scenes where friction between the upper management and the players are heightened to create drama. There’s none of that here.
What this docu does is try to present the picture as a whole, from the efforts of the owners and C-suite to literally almost anything they can to raise exposure for the club. Embarrassing TikTok vids by Rob and Ryan?
No problem. Interviews where the comedians poke fun at themselves?
Dunzo. Exposure means money and money will always mean more resources and options to throw at the campaign of the team’s betterment.
In the meantime, we can also appreciate how much the players and the staff of the team have to deal with, as changes rock Wrexham’s Red Dragons to the core. The scenes with the five players who all live sardined into a small house, hits home as small towns like Wrexham just don’t have the same margin of support in terms of the pot.
Said pot is comprised of the salary from the team plus sponsorship money from brands and corporations. That TikTok logo on the team’s jersey kits likely represent a huge payout of advertising money.
Yet, still, it’s all peanuts in the larger scheme of things.
Case in point, the uber expensive field that Rob and Ryan had just finished paying for was damaged in the very first home game of the season. It’s low-hanging fruit to compare the crappy state of the newly laid pitch to the team itself.
But we’ll take it and say the changes have not been taken to heart yet, hence it’s all cosmetics. And the cosmetics, no matter how pretty, do not win games as we see Wrexham suffer loss after loss after loss.
Team chemistry and the all-powerful cliché of “You can’t teach heart” need time to bed down and marinate into the organization’s bones. “Owning a football team is financially idiotic,” declares Ryan Reynolds in VO at the end, and adding “Yet utterly addictive.”
I hope this episode and its frustrations is just a setup for the start of the redemption arc in the next one. ‘Cause I now kind of know a bit of how Wrexham supporters feel after decades of losses.
It’s not fun. Definitely not pretty.
Welcome to Wrexham season 1, episode 3 recap: Rebuilding. dark. Next