Wrexham spent 2024/25 battling it out with Birmingham City at the top end of the League One table.

Birmingham City broke the EFL points record in the most recent campaign, with their total of 111 more than any club has ever managed in the top four tiers of English football.

This was not that surprising given that Birmingham broke the League One transfer record for Jay Stansfield, paying over £10m for the forward.

Wrexham lost to Birmingham in the first meeting between the two sides this past season and were held to a 1-1 draw at the Racecourse Ground.

In the end, the Dragons finished on 92 points, well off the pace of the Blues but still enough to clinch second.

Co-Owners of Wrexham AFC Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds talk as they wait for the arrival of King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort during their visit to Wrexham AFC.
Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImageWrexham outperform Birmingham City in 2024/25 rankings

However, while Wrexham didn’t really come close to challenging Birmingham for the title, they did outperform Tom Brady’s club in Opta’s 2024/25 power rankings.

What are Opta’s power rankings? Well, as the data-driven site explains: “The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns a score to over 13,000 men’s domestic football teams and over 2,000 women’s domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best.

“We can use them to objectively compare the quality of clubs from different leagues, countries and continents, though on this occasion we’ve used them to compare a single club’s performance over the course of a season by looking at their position in the rankings today relative to where they were at the start of 2024-25.”

In that department, Wrexham absolutely dominated every side in League One and the majority of teams in world football.

Phil Parkinson’s side ended 2024/25 with a post-season ranking of 380. In comparison, they were ranked 1,522nd in the world in August.

That is a fourfold increase and meant Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ club saw the fifth-biggest percentage increase in their position of every single team Opta covers.

Birmingham did crack the top ten, but were unable to match Wrexham.

Team Pre-season ranking Post-season ranking Ranking increase Liverpool 8 1 x8 Nottingham Forest 109 22 x5 Burnley 205 46 x4.5 Al Ittihad 524 126 x4.2 Wrexham 1522 380 x4 Brighton 52 13 x4 Aston Villa 40 10 x4 Birmingham 645 166 x3.9 Stockport County 1452 392 x3.7 Crystal Palace 44 12 x3.7

Via OptaPhoto by Alex Pantling/Getty ImagesPhoto by Alex Pantling/Getty ImagesTom Brady dig at Wrexham

It has been a largely friendly rivalry between the two clubs over the last year.

However, Brady made a dig at Wrexham recently when he was a guest on CBS Sports ahead of the 2025 Champions League final.

He said: “You know what, we beat Wrexham. Let’s not talk about Wrexham. But we kicked their — this year, multiple times.”

Birmingham beat Wrexham once in 2024/25, drawing the other fixture.