Les Reed Driving Wrexham’s Long-Term Ambitions Forward | OneFootball

It has been nothing short of a meteoric rise for Wrexham Football Club…

Founded as the oldest club in Wales and the third-oldest professional association football team in the world, but it wasn’t until November 2020 that they hit the mainstream stage following the takeover of Wrexham by actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds through Wrexham Holdings LLC.

This newfound financial affluence, combined with the instant success of the documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, would catapult the club to the forefront of the game. Even whilst playing in the fifth division, they had an international popularity that not only rivalled, but surpassed established Premier League sides like West Ham, Brighton and Crystal Palace.

Photo IMAGO

However, the two Hollywood stars would find it difficult in their opening season as Wrexham finished eighth in the National League. They needed a veteran decision-maker to help them get their project up and running: they needed Les Reed.

Boasting nearly a half-century of experience in coaching and advisory roles, Reed enjoyed success not just in England with his various spells at the FA as well as his time at Fulham and Charlton, but in faraway lands like South Africa, the Republic of Ireland, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Ghana, and Zimbabwe. Considered one of the best executives in the game alongside the likes of Giuseppe Marotta and Ben Harburg, Reed made his name during his time in Southampton.

Reed initially served as Southampton’s Head of Football Development and Support before being promoted to Vice-Chairman, where he oversaw the youth academy, scouting and recruitment, sports medicine and science, and kit and equipment management and played an instrumental role as Southampton ascended from League One to the top flight. Southampton would consolidate themselves as a regular Premier League presence and reach the 2017 EFL Cup Final under his tutelage, before Reed eventually departed in 2018 to return to the FA.

He wasn’t out of club management for long before being offered a position as an advisor to the board, with Reed being immediately given the responsibility of selecting a new manager (Phil Parkinson, who has remained ever since) and deciding which players to cut and which to keep. With Reed calling the shots behind the scenes, Wrexham have managed to become the first team in the history of England’s top five divisions to achieve three consecutive promotions. He’s not only guiding the club’s recruitment strategy, but their mission to get their infrastructure up to standard with the rest of the Championship.

“This is exactly what I was faced with when I went to Southampton in League One when they were in administration,” stated Reed in an exclusive EPL Index interview. “Essentially, you need to win football matches. Infrastructure doesn’t bring you sustainability unless you’re winning. So with Wrexham, it was the most important thing from day one to build a team good enough to get promoted on a number of accounts. Continue building that team each year, so we keep getting promoted.”

Photo: IMAGO

“You know that strategy paid off and that’s where significant investment went, because we went very quickly through those leagues. Now we have good training facilities, it’s not like we don’t have the right facilities to be able to train properly and prepare, but they’re owned by the FAW, and so longer term for sustainability, we need to get our own base. But we’re not panicking about that because we can still prepare the players as well as anybody else.”

“We have excellent quality staff which has grown over the last few years. Our backroom in medical and sports science is as good as any Championship club and a number of Premier League clubs. We are growing the academy step by step, because it’s more important that we have nine to sixteen-year-olds coming on board now who are going to be the future of the club, you know, hopefully in the Premier League in years to come, and we’re building in some sustainability. But when you are successful on the pitch, you grow your fanbase, increase your revenues, get better sponsors, and all of that, if managed properly, brings you sustainability for the future. It’s when you gamble at any one stage that you put all of that at risk.”

After returning to the second tier for the first time in 44 years, Wrexham decided to invest €37.93m on 14 new players in the summer transfer window, including several players with Premier League experience like Conor Coady and Lewis O’Brien. They commenced their season with back-to-back defeats to Southampton and West Brom before drawing with Sheffield Wednesday and getting their first win to close out August in a 2-0 victory at Millwall.

Wrexham would fall to a 3-1 defeat to QPR before bouncing back with a 3-2 win at Norwich, followed by three straight 1-1 draws. Wrexham currently sit 18th in the table, four points above the relegation zone. And after getting past Hull, Preston and Reading, they’ll be looking to advance past Cardiff City and make it to the EFL Cup quarter-finals.

“We know that within our sensible budgets, we can be competitive in the Championship in terms of the team that we recruited and built for and the way we play and develop and train. So we can be competitive on the pitch and so step by step make those other things grow around us, because if we’re successful on the pitch, if we’re competitive in the Championship, we will sustain those revenues that will then allow us to allocate funding for infrastructure growth over a longer period of time.”

“There’s the tortoise and the hare. You know the team is the hare, but the tortoise is rapidly coming up behind it, and it’s that sensible use of resources that’s important, so other teams who might be in a position like we are, who’ve managed to stabilise themselves in the Championship in order to make that next push, need to find some significant investment from somewhere, and usually that’s in the owner’s pocket. We don’t have to do that to get that sustainability in place for the future.”

“Because we still have a lot of growth and many, many other ways to increase those revenues, that will deliver for us to invest in the team to make sure we’ve got that Championship-ready squad that enables us to compete in the Championship this year. This is Wrexham, you know. We often talk about sustaining or consolidating; it doesn’t happen if we compete — there’s always a chance that we’re within the points range towards the end of the season to have a crack at promotion. And that’s our intention. If the door opens, let’s walk through it.”

Wrexham will be looking to end their streak of stalemates as they travel to Stoke City on 18 October, before taking on Oxford at home and Middlesbrough away. Watching them every step of the way will be Les Reed who, seven years after departing St Mary’s, is painting a new masterpiece in Wales. And whilst he’s set to turn 73 in just two months, he’s still got plenty of oil left in the tank.

“I’ve been one of the lucky ones, and there are a few of us who exist in this world that have been able to be paid for what we love doing. That, for me, is in a number of different guises.

Nothing beats playing then coaching, nothing beats being on that bench on a Saturday, the adrenaline and stuff like that as a coach, but there are lots of roles in football. I’ve been lucky to be able to stay in the game that I love and be paid for it all of my career, and I’ve never seen it as work. It’s been effort, and time, but a lot of people do that and play golf.”

“Put loads of effort in, lots of time and play golf, I don’t see myself doing that. I see myself carrying on doing what I love, which is football. People say to me, ‘When are you going to retire?’ And I’m like, what is that for me? Retirement should be doing what you love doing and enjoying it, and I get to be able to do that.”

“So I don’t see myself changing in that respect. I see myself taking on exciting things to do, because that’s what I like, but being able to do it the way I do it means being flexible. Once a year myself and a few mates charter a boat, and we sail around Turkey or the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, that’s it. I don’t want to go boating every weekend, you know, but once a year. Get the right conditions, get a good break in sunshine — a break, as well as play golf.”