Not so long ago, a trip to London for Wrexham meant Barnet, Bromley or Dagenham & Redbridge.
All fine clubs in their own right but a world away from West Ham United, winners of the UEFA Conference League just three years ago and the club that did more than any other to help England win the World Cup in 1966.
This rich and illustrious history, plus West Ham being outside the Premier League for only the fourth time in the past 34 years, meant a first trip to the London Stadium had been ringed on the calendar ever since the fixtures were released in June.
Even Sky Sports subsequently shifting the game to Friday night for live broadcast, in the process making it the fourth consecutive away game this season when fans who travel by train have had to stump up for an overnight stay due to not being able to get back to north Wales, could not put off the 2,000 or so who headed south.
Long before the end, however, that excitement had given way to a crushing sense of dejection, as the heaviest defeat of Phil Parkinson’s reign — eclipsing the 5-0 hammering meted out by Stockport County in League Two — made for a miserable night in the English capital.
Even allowing for the undoubted quality in the home ranks, with Jarrod Bowen having played for England as recently as March and Joel Piroe bagging the Golden Boot in his last season at this level with Championship title winners Leeds United in 2024-25, there was no sugar coating such a heavy loss.
Not only were Wrexham guilty of defending that would have shamed a schoolboy, but they also visibly wilted in the face of a claret and blue tide that, without a couple of excellent saves from the horribly exposed Anthony Patterson, could have brought a defeat of even more embarrassing proportions.
“We very rarely come up short on big nights,” says Parkinson. “Or big occasions. I can’t remember too many times when it’s been billed as a big game that we’ve come out and not performed.
“Part of me is being reasonable and saying these are a really good side. A multi-million pound attacking force, probably a strike force that could be in the Premier League. But, equally, we can do a lot better.
“I look back to when we were in the National League and playing Championship teams (Coventry City and Sheffield United), and Premier League teams in Chelsea and Nottingham Forest last season, and we acquitted ourselves better than we did tonight.
“We have to look at the reasons for that. Whatever division we have been in, we’ve had the ability to show resilience and stay in games to give ourselves a chance. But, tonight, after those first two goals, we lost our way.”
Manor Solomon scores West Ham’s sixth goal (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
As Wrexham walked out at the London Stadium in front of 59,712 fans — a new record attendance for a fixture involving the Welsh club, smashing the previous best set 56 years earlier at Liverpool’s Anfield by more than 5,000 — this still felt like a ‘pinch me’ moment for those fans who had been watching Jordan Davies net the only goal in a 1-0 home win over Woking exactly five years earlier.
By full time, however, those in Wrexham colours looked punch-drunk, such was the battering their team had taken in front of a live TV audience on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Six-nil on your big day out,” crowed the overjoyed locals as what had been a proud record in London under Hollywood ownership — just one defeat in 16 previous league visits to the English capital since the February 2021 takeover by Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac — was smashed to smithereens.
Certainly, the manner of this defeat is likely to make it a long week at Colliers Park, as first an inquest is held into what went wrong before Parkinson sets about the task of coaxing a response out of his players for the final fixture before the international break, at home to Southampton.
“I’ve got to analyse myself,” said the Wrexham manager, who made six changes to his starting XI, including first starts of the season for George Dobson and Joe Worrall. “And have that accountability. As I always do, trust me on that.
“Looking at myself, what I could have done better. If you get beat as heavily as we did, we have to look at all reasons.”
The outside noise surrounding Wrexham will no doubt be loud in the coming days. You can’t spend the thick end of £70million ($95m) in the past three transfer windows, as the Welsh club have done, without facing scrutiny, especially after such a chastening night in east London.
Inside The Racecourse, however, there is likely to be only a doubling down and a determination to turn around another slow start to the season.
Wrexham have faced setbacks under Parkinson before and overcome them all. None more so than following that 5-0 thumping at Stockport in September 2o23, after which co-owner Mac texted his manager almost the moment the final whistle blew at Edgeley Park to pledge, “Phil, we are right behind you”.
There’s also a recognition of just how far Wrexham have come, especially from those days when The Hive, Hayes Lane and Victoria Road were the destinations when visiting the English capital, rather than a club boasting a trio of World Cup winners in Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters.
Even co-owners Mac and Reynolds had a taste of how emotionally draining life can be on the road in non-League, their first time watching Wrexham in person having come in a 3-2 defeat at Maidenhead United in front of just 1,692 fans.
“I had a bit of an existential crisis at that match,” said Reynolds about that October 2021 debut, 25 miles to the west of central London, in an interview released this week by the club to mark their five-and-a-bit years at the helm. “I thought. ‘What the f*** are we doing here?’.
“It just felt so far-fetched. The promise and the hope to be, someday, perhaps in League One. Or League Two, even. It was such a pipedream. It felt like the biggest possible pipedream in that moment, in those bleachers in that tiny, little… I guess, it’s a stadium, I don’t even know. Very small.”
Food for thought a little under five years on, as Wrexham lick their wounds after discovering that the streets of London aren’t always paved with gold.
