Humphrey Ker reflects on Wrexham's climb up the football pyramid and what comes next for the Red Dragons: This Week in Wrexham 12/19/25

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0:40Grab yourself a pair today at newbalance.com slash soccer. You're listening to the Men in Blazers Media Network, Suboptimal Radio. Who will finish higher in their table, have a more successful year, do you think? Will it be Wrexham or will it be Liverpool? Wrexham finishing 10th in the Championship is a greater achievement than Liverpool finishing 2nd in the Premier League. I think most Liverpool fans will bite your arm off for 10th at the moment, haven't they? I think Liverpool will be all right.

1:14It's a joy and wonder to welcome today's guest back to the show. You know I adore any opportunity to relive Wrexham's incredible journey. They've climbed out the National League, football's pit of Sarlacc, all the way to the championship with a historic, unprecedented run. Those three straight promotions, three straight seasons going in and out of leagues so bloody quickly. The kit man probably doesn't know what patches to iron on anyone's sleeves anymore. It's been incredible to witness and to live, especially for the fan base, the hardworking, immensely proud city of Wrexham itself. I'm in London, he's in Birmingham, but we are going to connect over North Wales and revisit some of Rex's proudest champagne drenched moments of 2025 and look ahead to the year to come.

1:58I'm raising my glass of ice cold stoke cold brew to a gent who's lived all of it from the inside. It's Mr Humphrey Carr. Hello. Good morning. Humph, you look, can we just say, I mean, you're a very, very erotic man, but you look gorgeous today. Well, that's very kind of you. I don't feel gorgeous at all. I've been quite ill for a while, which has meant I've lost weight. So that's something. But the lamb chops, Humpf. Oh, yes. Yeah, this is I'm active in my day job at the moment as an actor and playing Sherlock Holmes. As you do. As one does, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, yeah, so I've had to shave the hair to an appropriately Victorian vibe.

2:46I've got to tell you, I'm going to start growing these bad boys out because you are an influencer. But it has been almost eight months since we last spoke, a time period that's forced us all to learn what Dubai chocolate is. And one in which Wrexham continue that generational glow up, third promotion, third straight season. We're going to talk about it more, but Championship Wrexham, Humphrey. That is, I mean, what is it to you? It remains quite extraordinary, really. I think every week you kind of check the fixture list and see another name that has blazed a glorious trail in the annals of football history and think, God, blimey, I can't believe we're playing them.

3:25It feels a long way from Maidenhead United away. or I think Weymouth away was the first game I went to in the National League. And so now, yes, to be going to Ipswich and going to Norwich and going to Millwall and all these clubs, Leicester City, is incredibly exciting. Middlesbrough. Middlesbrough, no less. The Smoggies. You went to Middlesbrough, didn't you? Didn't you have a palmer with Tyler? I did, I did, I did. By the way, still digesting it. Seven months off, it was an away day of wonder. And seeing, honestly, the fan base, which I've traveled with a number of times on this journey, but the size of the traveling army now.

4:10I think the technical term is the girth of the traveling army. I think they took three and a half thousand up to Middlesbrough from Wrexham. You shall know us by the trail of our away fans. It's just, it's an epic scale. Wrexham meets Cecil B. DeMille on the road. It's remarkable, the joy, the swath of joy that they're cutting across the nation right now. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I think one of the things that people often that have discovered Wrexham through the documentary have been quite intrigued by is kind of football away culture, you know, is the travelling fan culture that, you know, has long been embodied in British football.

4:51And I think Wrexham do it as well as anyone, really. And I think even when we were, you know, playing Dover away in the National League, you were still getting hundreds of people traveling, which is a long, long way to go, you know, particularly on a Tuesday night. But Wrexham would travel in their, at that stage, hundreds and now in their thousands. The Army is a Star Wars cantina of humanity. What struck me, actually, and I think it's probably one of my abiding memories of football in 2025, we pulled into a pub as you do before the game um first the pints and then the the point um and it was amazing speaking to the fans so many of them are actually deeply local um and would would talk honestly um about how they are new Wrexham fans Wrexham obviously you know the joke you know 10 years ago couldn't give away a ticket um but the number of human beings who said quite openly just how traveling with Wrexham has been so good for their mental health.

5:52I genuinely lifted them up with the community, the connectivity, the sense of structure, the sense of positivity in an otherwise challenging time. Football is best when it transcends football and so much what is going on within that away fan community is so deeply rich and mentally nourishing. The magic of football clubs really is that in a society that's becoming ever more fractured and ever more kind of interacts through screens and, you know, inflammatory Twitter posts and watching 30 second clips of things on the Internet and getting angry about it. Football clubs are a place where people can come together and you all want the same thing and you're pulling in the same direction.

6:35and, you know, there'll always be differences of opinion and controversies and this, that and the other, but ultimately you're just kind of watching the thing that you love happen with other people who love that thing. And it's a very good place to be. Before we get too far into it, I do have to say a huge thank you to everyone at Stoke Cold Brew Coffee for powering this series. Stoke is a must-have in my own refrigerator, especially the espresso blend. And Stoke are also proud supporters of Wrexham AFC, The club that's been dominating football while capturing our hearts, explore Stoke's full lineup of 48-ounce cold brew flavors, from like roast to seasonable favorites in a refrigerated multi-serve format.

7:16Something for everyone. Don't forget to follow Wrexham AFC. Once again, shout out to Stoke. We should also say the move to the second tier for Wrexham. Arguably the undercard to the real big news, Humphrey, that you have evolved your role within the club. You've moved from executive director to community director, which essentially is what we've just been talking about, what I lived out, what you've just articulated. And then you've been spending a little bit more time in Los Angeles, trading those 2 p.m. sunsets in North Wales for Erwan smoothies. But when I think about it, it's probably more celebrity sightings in Wrexham nowadays, to be fair.

7:54Well, actually, I've not been in L.A. for about five, six months at the moment, unfortunately. But yes, no, I mean, as time went on, my role as executive director was sort of slightly surplus to requirements, really, because, you know, why that had been so important to start off with was having kind of board level presence in the UK to enable the club to kind of operate on a legal basis. basis effectively you needed you needed a board member to be abreast of what was going on to yes thumbs up thumbs down things whatever they may be transfers etc etc um you know signing agreements signing deals signing contracts whatever it may be and as the club has grown and the executive board has grown and has got onto a slightly more traditional footing.

8:48You don't really need one rogue legend, dare I say. No, one rogue man hanging around that is vested with all that legal authority to do things. I think there was a sort of a feeling that I somehow ran the club from top to bottom, which was never really the case. I just oversaw the people that did. But I wanted to kind of focus in on something that was a part of the job that I enjoyed and cared about and that I felt like I could make an impact in. and that was on the kind of community foundation side of things really so my role is is really to oversee our the the club's foundation which is like the charitable arm of the club and so i'm the chairman of the board of trustees of that and um yes a lot of what we do is is looking at kind of using the football club as a an engine to drive positive change in north wales and and further afield to more of that also to more of you getting back into the humphrey car origins that the theater on the treading the boards i do want to say i heard you're not only starring in which you've already told us you also bloody wrote the thing right you decided you let out the the the the serial killer uh narrative that's always laid dormant inside of you and somehow you got tim right and andrew lloyd weber to write the song write some songs yeah yeah yeah i know yeah so that's been that's been on the go for god i mean before i think the whole wrexham thing started or maybe around the same time my pal dave reed and i wrote this script and we've um it's been in development for donkey's years and now it's actually every night well i've been as i've been off for a few days because i'm a bit poorly but uh uh normally every night at 7 p.m we go out and entertain the fine people of birmingham chop various people's heads off uh shoot shoot people do all sorts of stuff.

10:36Just a Tuesday night in Birmingham, that. Yeah, festive. Yeah, it is. By the way, Andrew Lloyd Webber, it does sound like the next great 15-year-old to come out of the Arsenal Academy, but to have Reif and Lloyd Webber, they're like the Paul Mullen and Ollie Palmer, if you don't know who they are, of musical theatre, dear listeners. Have there been a lot of the Wrexham fan base, a lot of the Wrexham players? Has Max Klaworth been? It's like the thumbs up or thumbs down for Max Klaworth. Max has not been to see it, to the best of my knowledge. Or even worse, maybe he has been to see it and he just didn't like it.

11:10And so he's not texting me to tell me. But we had on press night, we had a good showing. Sean Harvey came down and Mark Howard and Ben Tozer, Jamie Edwards from the Community Foundation. He's a little musical theatre. Yeah, those guys love a bit of that. And then we've had a big contingent from Wrexham Minors Project, which is a delight, which is a charity in Wrexham that I ran a marathon for earlier in the year. a good sort of mix of like various members of staff and and and people have come down but i it's one of those things where i sort of i'm nervous that having too many people come down and see it may reduce my enormous natural authority i have in and around the building if they've seen me in my underpants as uh as happens at one stage in the show is that the scene where you channel ollie palmer yes yeah i go into that like slide thing uh i slide down the front of the stage uh in full underpants mode godspeed i sure luck homes ollie palmer by the way i think we just guaranteed a sellout for the rest of the run knowing that there's a little hump in his uh in his grundles um but what i want to do is live out some of the beats of 2025 with you yeah i never want to take any of this for granted i don't want to normalize any of this i mean it has been ecstatic i think for so many human beings the the memories that keep being made and layered on top of each other, like snow falling on snow.

12:35We last spoke in April, which feels like both at once, like it was last weekend about 10 years ago, but Wrexham were once again on the brink of emerging from league one. And there were just two games left in the season. I think there was at home to Charlton and then away to Lincoln city. You're always, when we see quite pragmatic in key moments, we're both ultimately, I realize, I mean, I'm American now, but those English roots, it's what we do. We like to repress our emotions behind heavy overcoats and oil paintings and spaniels in your case. But how were you really feeling in the days before those two final, especially the crucial home game?

13:12I always take my lead from what I get out of the dressing room, basically. So, you know, I was in Wrexham for that period and being in and out of the building and being around Phil and being around the players and stuff, they all seemed very, I think the big turning point was Blackpool. You know, that Blackpool away game was the moment when, you know, we'd kind of stuttered for a few games. We'd drawn a couple of games and everyone was starting to feel this slight monkey on the back. And I think Blackpool was the one that kind of gave them the belief that they were going to do it. And so when it came to the Charlton game, I was quite, I was quietly quite confident, actually.

13:55I really felt like we just had been in that position before of like, right, we need to win a big game at home to achieve our dreams. And as a result, they decided to go and do it. Do it, they did. You went into week 45. God, just saying that, week 45 of the, I mean, you ran a marathon. The League One is an ultra marathon. I mean, my God, don't get me started on runner's nipple that you get in a League One season. But he had a two-point lead over third place Wickham, whose game against Lincoln City kicked off before Wrexham were due to face Charlton at home at the mighty Stoke Kairas. And Wickham ultimately lost 1-0.

14:35A result which was probably celebrating every single pub across North Wales. A bit like it was a combination of St. David's Day and the release of the Nintendo Switch 2. where were you both physically and mentally in those moments before kickoff uh for the rexham game when you realized um that you were just 90 minutes away from another promotion not to constantly bang on about my bloody marathon but it was also the day before i was gonna have to run a marathon scheduling well as a result we my wife and i were sort of in the morning very much like okay well we ate the breakfast we were supposed to eat the day before the marathon um i can't remember what it was i think like a tom brady little almond which way it's like i think we ate bagels and peanut butter and bananas or something because we knew that's what we were going to eat on the day you're sort of supposed to eat the same thing for sort of a few days in a row and and we were also packing everything up because we knew we were going to move out of my regular wrexham haunt and go and stay in manchester the saturday night and then we were going to do the run.

15:42We were going to stay in Manchester the Sunday night. And then Monday, we were going to drive down to my mum and dad's for a bit of R &R. And so, yeah, that morning was very much sort of packing and like kind of half checking the score and I think it was actually my wife was the one who was like, oh, my God, oh, my God, from through in the other room. And I was like, what, what? She's like, they just scored, they just scored. And, you know, we started to realise that, oh, hang on, this might really be I think it's always safest to assume you're going to have to do everything yourself and not rely on the other team to drop points to give you that cushion.

16:19So I always thought, well, we're going to have to try and beat Charlton here and go and get a result in Lincoln and just try and hold them off right to the final day. But I think when that result came through, it just gave everyone a massive lift. You just suddenly felt like, well, I thought we were going to win today, but now I think we're going to get promoted today. So you were there. You were at the Stoke Co-Rass. how did this celebration this is a slightly weird question this is like asking and I've talked a lot about him recently at the end of the end of the year asking Augustus Glute what another chocolate tastes like at a certain point do they all feel different how did this compare to the ones that preceded it for you?

16:58The reason why they all feel the same or how they all feel the same because they do to a certain extent is that over the course of the year where you find a group of players and, you know, obviously our management team who've been the same from the jump, but the coaches and the medical team and everybody that you love, you know, you end up kind of falling in love with them. While it's so exciting for you, of course, and it's exciting for me and my wife and I leapt up and down and embraced and celebrated up there. really the thing I'm most pleased for is for them because you know when you go behind the sort of key card access door into the players area of a football club you see how hard they work you see how much they sacrifice you see how much they deal with mentally in terms of recovering from a difficult position or making a mistake or doing whatever very protective of of our players and staff because I think people when we you know have the temerity to draw games in the championship sometimes there's there's a temptation people have to go oh they don't care or they don't try hard enough or they don't do whatever like nobody becomes a football a professional footballer at championship level and doesn't want to win every single game but from the bottom of their heart like that's all they care about and so they all feel the same for that reason because you're always I'm always so desperate for them to do well and to and to get their reward for all their hard work but they all do feel different because you know the first one had that weight of history um of the 15 years the second one i think we really enjoyed a sense of like being told right from the jump oh well welcome to the football league it's a very different prospect you know you you jumped up parvenues are going to find it very hard hey like good luck going to walsall and places like that yeah um and then this one had that added thing of like this is a historic thing this is whatever happens going forward nothing you know everybody who plays every you know from from one to eleven on that day is now a legitimate sort of pub quiz question for the rest of their life which i know probably most footballers aren't that worried about being a pub quiz question but for some reason it's the sort of thing i'd like fight your home off by the way to be a perfect question.

19:29The only question that comes out, who is that bald bastard, would be the one. It probably wouldn't, you know, be a stumper. Do you let yourself take pause and remind yourself that what you're living, what you're witnessing, what you've been part of, Humphrey, it's not how football's meant to work. I mean, at all. That is, it is a singular journey that you've been on, a singular club that you're part of. Yeah, I try to, I really do try to. I mean, it's difficult. Life, the way life works is that, you know, I've been incredibly fortunate in my life and I've managed to live out two or three lifetimes worth of dreams in my life.

20:06And it's amazing. But what you learn is that tomorrow always comes. You wake up the next day and it's like, right, well, that was great. But we've got to keep going. There's got to be another horizon to try and cross and another depth to plumb and another mountain to, I'm just going in all different directions. I've done forwards, down, up, and another side to go around. There you go. I've covered all the different. Earth, wind, down, fire, maybe. And so, yes, I mean, I do. And I do take immense pleasure and I take immense pride. you know the place now is it's extraordinary Wrexham is unrecognizable in terms of a football club from where it was in in 2020 when I first cycled there in during Covid um you know I think that's amazing but it's also you know in some ways it's a bit sad I miss I sometimes miss the good old days like what one you feel out in your heart what is there a memory is there a moment Yeah, I mean, I think about how fun it was.

21:16Again, I'm talking about my very first game I went to, being driven by Geraint Parry, the club secretary, along with Colin and Ollie, who were the two media team guys at the time. We drove down to Weymouth from Wrexham at breakneck speed to go down and watch. No one there, because it was COVID, and it was so sort of bizarre and weird. And it just, you know, it's that thing of kind of sometimes the journey is more fun than the destination. and we're still on a great journey and there's still you know so much to so much to do and so much to discover and all that but it was it was just a lot of fun when it was a little bit more um rough and ready more of a cowboy operation i mean it is amazing i mean at the beginning you know we're meant to know there's no romance in football you you talked about it earlier i love your phrasing like warsaw they'll find you out like everyone's been waiting for you guys to you know to get ahead of yourselves to find you you know you come up and it's a very very british thing like success oh they got theirs in the end didn't they

22:17Wrexham keeps climbing I mean it's ultimately in the championship which we'll get to has become even more tenacious it's been a journey of you know perseverance in this in 2025 at the end but there is meant to be no romance in football there is meant to be you know with no fairy tale um when you look at particularly the last 18 months what has rexham had that others don't um you know is it like 11 herbs and spices for the particularly for the last couple the last promotions you can tell us no one is watching from the inside how do you understand it i've always always put all the credit at the feet of phil parkinson and and steve parkin and Aidan Davison and their coaches, the coaching staff at Wrexham and like their capacity to build a group of people that all pull in the right direction, all pull for each other and all ultimately understand that they're part of something bigger than themselves.

23:17And I think that's the thing that is like, you know, it's been talked about often over the last few years and Phil's capacity to find players that fit his sort of mental profile, the no plonkers test, you know, all this kind of stuff. He's just very, very, very good at that. And I think that he's found a way to find those people and imbue them with a never say die attitude, with a willingness to fight to the very, very end. And, you know, this season we've already had a couple of instances of like very late equalising goals to dig us out of a jam. And I think that is the thing. You know, there are lots of other clubs that have had more money than us and more impetus and more X, Y, Z and bigger catchment areas and so on and so forth.

24:04But I think the thing that we did really right from the start was hiring Phil. I really believe when this story is told in like decades to come, he is so grounding. he is really an anchor for a project which is run on dreams and fumes and big ideas but that man is so pragmatic i've actually paced out with wayne um where the phil statue i think he told me it would be right behind the chip wagon um the burger van they'll bang the statue there ultimately but my god his part cannot be um overstated but you've already hinted upon you the good old days and part What the downside of the climb up the football pyramid at a pace even faster than what you drove down to Weymouth?

24:51Other than the amount of clothing you have to get dry cleaned after the old champagne celebrations, it means saying goodbye to some of the players who've been such essential heroes in that journey. 20 players left Wrexham during the summer, either being released, sent out on loan, contracts not renewed. You wrote on Instagram that you, I loved it, you said, I hate this time of year. You had to write tribute, I think, to the Scottish Samurai, Stephen Fletcher, who then retired from the game. Oli Palmer, who scored eight times this season for his new club, League Two, Swindon Town. And Super Paul Mullin, a gent who's 110 goals.

25:31Let me say that again, 110 goals for Wrexham, levitated him into true legend status, and immortalised him on a number of murals throughout the city. This summer, he went off on loan to Wigan in League One. In your own words, because you've lived them, you know them so deeply and they've shaped your life in profound ways. What have these gents done for the club? Well, I said earlier that I feel like I've lived out several lifetimes worth of dreams and the lifetime of dreams that is being part of a successful football club was entirely given to me by those people that you have just named there. I mean, Tom O 'Connor and Jacob Mendy and Owen O 'Connell and James Jones and Fordy.

26:21And I mean, they went earlier in the season, but like so many people who have given me moments of the most exquisite joy and like have had me leap out of my seat or, you know, explode out of bed when I'm in LA and watching the games at 7am. and you know that then I I you know I my hope is for them I mean I know that the people of Wrexham will embrace them forever and when when any of those people come back and they are ever seen in and around uh the city of Wrexham people will be very very happy to see them but I hope that they feel that they got to do something incredible with their careers because because is, you know, I think to be a professional footballer is amazing.

27:05But to be a professional footballer who is part of a title winning team or is part of a promotion winning team or is part of a, you know, what we've gone through in the last three years is, you know, that is almost impossible to get. And one thing I've been so delighted by is not to promote a rival podcast or piece of content, Roger, never would. Please. But to see, you know, Ben Tozer and Ben Foster and Stephen Fletcher starting to do that Wrexham podcast and, you know, us being able to bring some of these these recent legends back into the fold and take them to the US on some of our community foundation activities.

27:47That's so great because it means that, you know, all those people who are so important to all of us get to still be part of this in some way. I mean, it's fascinating. You took out a you hope they know. Watching it back to prepare for this, I watched the most recent welcome to Wrexham season again. And the moment I love is when Oli Palmer's son asked him, is dad if he was a Wrexham icon? And Oli just said, that's not up to me to decide, buddy. well i mean i think you know you've only got to look at the the amazing mural that we've had done on the back of the cop sort of um protective hoardings there and you see ollie ollie's on there and paul and ben tozer and luke young uh and stephen fletcher and and fozzy and like all these people are really it's so funny it's so difficult to say who is and isn't an icon and i I think that we as football fans often want there to be a sort of, well, you've got to wait until they're at least 20 years retired before you can start saying that.

28:55But actually, this group of players, you know, the people that were part of the back to back to back, you know, have achieved as much as anyone in Wrexham footballing history. And, you know, there's a counter argument of this is a strange time and no other Wrexham era has been as well resourced as this one. But the fact of the matter is they did their talking on the pitch and they are rightly revered. There's been a whole host of new friends, including Championship Forge midfielder Lewis O 'Brien, Manchester City loaner Issa Kibore and a pair of Welsh internationals. We're normalising this now.

29:31Wrexham again. Welsh internationals on the field. Former Ipshirtstown tractor boy, the mighty Nathan Broadhead and the quite majestic Kiefer Moore, Who says you can't have it all? Ten goals in all competitions this season. Unbelievably dashing and handsome. Which players have you enjoyed the most this season? Who brought you a new sense of memory? My real highlight of this season so far is an old player, which is George Dobson, who came to us last year from Charlton and did brilliantly for us last year. but I think sort of was somewhat unfairly maligned as a like, well, yeah, he's a decent, you know, decent League One player, maybe a top half League One player, but I don't know that he's quite got championship quality.

30:20And I think he's been one of our best players this year. I think Arthur has done brilliantly this year after a difficult start. In goal. Yes, Arthur Conquo. I think Kiefer, as you say, I'm a big fan of because he's a big unit and I'm a big unit and all us members of the big unit. You're very, very similar characters. Guild have to, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We look, and when we both have our tops off, we look almost identical. And now, by the way, you don't, you've said you've missed the last couple of nights on the boards in Birmingham. When the audience turn up and they say, tonight the role of Sherlock Holmes will be played by the understudy of Humphrey Carr, Kiefer Moore.

30:58I mean, yeah, you can do, you are, he's your stunt double. Stunt double. He's very, he's very adaptable. He can do it all. He's so bloody handsome. He's so unbelievable. I mean, what a hero. Yeah. But I think, I mean, look, what's nice is I think we've had a great season thus far. And so it's quite easy to go down the team and be like, you know what? I'm very happy with it. I think Dom Hyam's done brilliantly. I think Ben Sheaf has been fantastic. I think Lewis has been great. Max Cleworth, of course, who continues to be incredible, to just rise to the challenge at every level that he finds himself at.

31:32And, you know, although, as I say, we don't know if he's been to see my play or not. So that's a bit of a minus mark. I think, you know, that I think Libby Kakachi and Issa Kaboria both look great when they've been available. Unfortunately, they've both been injured for a little while. But, you know, I think if we can get them back and fit and firing and keep them in the team, that will be a massive asset in the second half of the season. So Josh Windass has done brilliantly. I think Nathan Broadhead has shown flashes of fantastic stuff. but again I think it's a slightly struggle with the odd injury here and kind of coming in and out of the team so I think we're pretty happy with our scorecard my wife is mouthing Arthur at me Arthur at me from the side of the room but I started with Arthur, Darno before you were in the room By the way, everyone has their favourite everybody has their favourite Arthur is a real Mrs Carr favourite We cannot say enough about that incredible human being I'm going to put you on the spot quickly before we talk about this season and pull this together is there any truth to the transfer rumours of January, Mo Salah to the Stoke Kairas.

32:38Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no. That means yes, he's not denying it, dear listeners. Neither confirm nor deny. Yes, there you go. Are you telling me there's a chance? I mean, talk about telling me there's a chance. As you say, it's been a fascinating season to watch. Wrexham are currently sitting in an incredibly tight table in 15th place in the Championship. I mean, the teams are crowded together like a shark's bottom teeth. six points separate 15th from fifth place Ipswich Town. How have you lived it? Really, honestly, retrospectively, no one's listening to this. What were your expectations going in?

33:13I mean, we talked about consolidation last year. A word Rob Mack told me he didn't even know what it means. But what did you expect and how has that championship grind been lived out? I think, you know, we, our aspirations were high for this season because we spent a lot of money in the summer to try and create a side that was competitive in the championship. And so, you know, I think there are two sort of sides to this. One is I'm very, very content with 15th, six points off fifth. But also like we had set out to make sure that we could try and challenge to get into a playoff place, you know.