'I played party-pooper' - Humphrey Ker reveals he stopped Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney investing in Scottish minnows Arbroath before they bought Wrexham
Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds considered buying Scottish minnows Arbroath before investing in Wrexham, revealed executive director Humphrey Ker.
WHAT HAPPENED? Reynolds and McElhenney contemplated the possibility ofpurchasing Arbroath since Ker's university flatmate was a supporter of the Scottish Championship club. However, the venture didn't materialise, and the reason behind this decision was the realisation of the challenges they would face in competing with Scottish giants like Celtic and Rangers.
Instead, Reynolds and McElhenney chose Wrexham as their project, where they saw the opportunity to build something long-term. In English football, they believed there were fewer limitations, and are still looking to take Wrexham from the National League tothe Premier League.
WHAT THEY SAID: «So right at the jump, Rob [McElhenney] 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,» he told BBC's Sacked In The Morning podcast.
«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
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