Rangers avoid multi-million Hollywood ‘assault’ as Wrexham chief reveals SPFL snub
Fierce rivals Rangers and Celtic are unquestionably the “big two” in Scottish football, and they have been for quite some time.
The duo have dominated proceedings over the years, and that is certain to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
But the status quo in the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) could have been disrupted by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
The duo bought Welsh outfit Wrexham AFC back in November 2020 for £2million [Independent, 26 June 2023], and the club’s Executive Director Humphrey Ker has now revealed that McElhenney initially had an idea to buy Scottish outfit Arbroath.
Speaking to BBC Scotland’s Sacked in the Morning podcast (24 October), Ker said: “So right at the jump, Rob said, well, what about a club in Ireland? Because his family are from Ireland, or from Northern Ireland, or from Scotland. And I’m afraid to say that I was a bit of a party pooper on that because my feeling was the ceiling in the English game is that much further away.
“My flatmate from university was a Red Lichties fan, so I have to go to Arbroath for my Scottish football club of choice. So ultimately, I said, if you went to Arbroath and we injected money and built that team and you got into the Premiership pretty quickly, you would then run up against Celtic and Rangers.
“When I lived in Edinburgh, I used to go to Hearts games. There was that period where all the Lithuanian players came over and it was like it would be a genuine challenger to that big two in Glasgow.
“But the speed at which you would get from Arbroath now to a sort of mid-table Scottish Premiership team would be quite quick. And then you would have this problem where you just get hammered all the time by the big boys there. It would just be tricky.”
The proposed attempted “assault” on both Rangers and Celtic [Daily Record, 25 October] did not come to pass, with the Americans settling on Wrexham in the end.
And it has been a success so far, with the club returning to the English Football League under their new owners. Moreover, Wrexham currently sit third in the League Two table, with a rapid rise to League One very much on the cards.
In other Rangers news, manager Philippe Clement must put the Gers board under pressure to sign one ace as transfer news emerges.