Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney opens up on 'devastating' summer transfer deal

Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney has admitted that he was left "devastated" after long-serving stars Ben Tozer and Luke Young departed the club in the summer.

Alongside Hollywood superstar Ryan Reynolds , the "It's Always Sunny" funnyman has helped transform the fortunes of the Red Dragons after their takeover in 2020. In the intervening years, the club has been promoted twice - with this current campaign the first time the Welsh outfit has competed in League One in two decades.

Two players who played instrumental roles in helping the upwardly-mobile side reach the EFL's third tier were Tozer and Young - who earned legend status at the Racecourse Ground for their contributions. However, the pair left the club at the end of last term, with the former heading to Forest Green Rovers, while the latter joined Cheltenham Town.

In the case of Tozer, he made 136 appearances and scored seven goals for Wrexham during a three-year spell in Wales from 2021 to 2024. When it comes to Young, he played for the club 252 times, tallying up 23 strikes, over six seasons between 2018 and 2024.

Now, co-chairman McElhenney has revealed that the departures of those two mainstays over the summer left him anguished. Speaking on Men in Blazers , he admitted: "One of the very few downsides of becoming so personally close with the players is that you have to say goodbye to everybody at some point.

“Ultimately, that’s a metaphor for life in general which is that people come and people go," he said as he confessed his sorrow at seeing the pair leave after their long association with the club. "But when you put so much value on the relationships that you have with people, to say goodbye is very difficult.

"We have had so many valleys along the way, in so far as we started the conversation talking about Ben Tozer and Luke Young, who is my favourite player – and I was very public in stating that! That’s not a slight to the other players, I just loved Luke, he was our longest-tenured players, he was with us from the very beginning, so to say goodbye to him was devastating – devastating."

In their absence, the Dragons have fared well in their opening set of fixtures in League Two - as they lead the table after four wins and a draw from their five outings. Manager Phil Parkinson said of their start: "Five games in and I know it doesn’t count for a great deal but equally I think we’ve got to be pleased with the work so far this season.

"Having the ability to handle being at the top and that extra kind of expectancy it creates, of course we’ve been there. The run with Notts County in the National League, every game was full on and you had to win every game and had to perform at your best to keep winning.

Revealing his contentment with the players he has at his disposal, he added: "So yes, we’ve got a group who are used to living with that and hopefully we’ll continue to thrive under that bit of added pressure. At the moment we will roll with what we have got."