Wrexham boss Phil Parkinson has been determined to bolster his wing-back options following Issa Kabore’s return to parent club Manchester City after his loan spell at the Stok Cae Ras last term.
Imray is yet to make a senior appearance for Palace, although he has gained plenty of experience at first-team level elsewhere.
Imray was immediately loaned back to Chelmsford City after securing a permanent switch to Selhurst Park in 2021.
He made 43 appearances across all competitions, scoring two goals, during a season-long loan spell with Bromley in 2024-25.
Imray then spent the opening half of the 2025-26 campaign on loan at League One side Blackpool before joining Championship West Brom in January.
Having made 13 first-team signings last summer on the back of securing automatic promotion from League One, Parkinson will not be making wholesale changes to his squad before the 2026-27 campaign.
However, a goalkeeper, a centre-back, a central midfielder and a forward are all potential additions alongside Imray.
Before the docuseries’ new season debuts, it is already known the club has fallen short of getting promoted to the Premier League, but the show is about much more.
And perhaps a quartet of consecutive promotions was asking too much for even a club touched by Hollywood.
It is four years since the last time the final game of the season wasn’t one of jubilant scenes.
Those in red immediately fell to the turf after referee Oliver Langford blew his whistle to bring the contest with Middlesbrough to an end.
Amid the disappointment, there would still have been plenty to smile about for supporters making their way out of Stok Cae Ras.
After all, this was still the north Wales club’s highest-ever league finish in their history.
Co-chairman Ryan Reynolds’s summary was apt.
“I am completely gutted by today’s result but incredibly proud of our season,” he wrote on social media.
“We’ve come a long way in five years and this was the best result in our 150+ year history. More to do. But for now, we have so much to be proud of. Reds.”
Wrexham’s dream of reaching the Premier League is over, for this season anyway.
And for Ryan Reynolds, it was tough to stomach.
“I am completely gutted by today’s result but incredibly proud of our season,” the actor wrote on X after the Welsh club he co-owns missed out on a place in the playoffs in the second-tier Championship by drawing 2-2 with Middlesbrough in a dramatic final round of the regular season on Saturday.
That allowed Hull to jump ahead of Wrexham and into sixth place — the fourth and final spot in the playoffs — courtesy of a 2-1 win over Norwich in a match played at the same time.
The winning goal for Hull, by Oli McBurnie in the 67th, appeared to be scored from an offside position but there are no video reviews in the English Football League.
It ended Wrexham’s unprecedented run of three straight promotions under its famous owners — a streak that began by getting out of the fifth tier in the 2022-23 season and has been documented in the globally popular, Emmy Award-winning “Welcome to Wrexham” series.
Still, seventh place marked the Wrexham’s highest finish in its history, bettering the 15th position it achieved in the second tier in the 1978–79 season.
“We’ve come a long way in five years and this was the best result in our 150+ year history,” Reynolds wrote alongside a graphic that showed how Wrexham has risen from the National League. “More to do. But for now, we have so much to be proud of, Reds.”
Elsewhere, Ipswich secured the second automatic promotion spot behind champion Coventry — and an immediate return to the Premier League — by beating Queens Park Rangers 3-0.
Ipswich is owned by U.S. investment group Gamechanger 20 Limited and counts pop star Ed Sheeran as a minority shareholder.
Joining Hull in the playoffs, which begin next week and are over two legs, are Millwall, Southampton and Middlesbrough.
Millwall will face Hull, and Southampton will meet Middlesbrough.
Best-ever finish by Wrexham
It was a memorable campaign by Wrexham in its first season in the second tier since the 1980s.
However, the short-term pain was acute, and Wrexham’s players sat on the ground and looked disconsolate after the final whistle — even though the Hull-Norwich match hadn’t finished.
Wrexham started the day in sixth place, ahead of Hull on goal difference, and conceded in the fourth minute to Middlesbrough, only to score through Josh Windass and Sam Smith for a 2-1 lead by the 41st.
Middlesbrough hit back immediately with a 43rd-minute equalizer but Wrexham finished the stronger, squandering a string of great late chances for a winner that would have secured a playoff place on goal difference.
Wrexham’s Josh Windass squats on the field and looks dejected following a draw with Middlesbrough on Saturday.
(Michael Steele / Getty Images)
In the end, Wrexham finished two points behind Hull.
“This squad as it stands, with a preseason together, will be even stronger next year,” said Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson, who oversaw a summer spend of around $40 million last year.
“Of course we’ll always look to add to that to try and give ourselves an even better chance … we know where we’d like to strengthen and what we need to improve on. We’ll do that and we’ll make this squad as strong as we possibly can to mount a challenge next year.”
For Rutherford a spell in the Welsh leagues followed but time is now spent split between some coaching, taxi-ing two of his boys to football training and working in a showroom of a hardware store.
All a world away from the millions on the line for the internationals in Parkinson’s squad aiming for the Premier League, one that has been rebuilt season on season with £30m-plus spent last summer alone.
“But even though it’s very different, it’s also the same club,” he says, his middle son part of the club’s academy.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to go back now and then and you see some of the same faces, good people, people who gave up their time for free to keep the club afloat.
“It’s a global brand but the football club is still at the heart of it. It’s kept its soul.”
Rutherford is well-qualified to judge. Although the co-owners never reached out after his release, he was invited to sample the US adulation for his old club as part of an invitational Wrexham side in a tournament in North Carolina alongside the likes of Mark Howard, Lee Trundle and Andy Morrell.
“Honestly, it’s hard to put it into words how big it’s become unless you see it,” he says of Wrexham’s new fanbase. “It was just after the club got into League Two, and I actually said when I was out there that they would be in the Premier League in 11 years.
“I don’t know why I didn’t say 10, but I thought they would land in League One for a few years and then take five or six years to get out of the Championship.
“To think they could do it in four is just phenomenal. I don’t want to say it would be a Hollywood story, it’ll be more like something out of Football Manager.”
Either way, there is a final day to script, with Rutherford a reminder that not every ending is a happy one.
“It’s bittersweet that we couldn’t get that promotion to the league and what happened, but I can look back now and say I was one of those who played a small part in the story and be proud of that,” he says.
“It was difficult at the time but hindsight gives you that context and I hope people keep that context if it doesn’t happen this time.
“It would only be a tiny applying of the brakes on an unbelievable journey – they’re still on their way.”
