Phil Parkinson praises Wrexham for staying ‘professional’ amid Vegas party plans

Phil Parkinson praised his Wrexham players for not letting their promotion party plans affect their end to the season.

History-making Wrexham, who sealed second spot last week to become the first Football League club to achieve three straight promotions, won 2-0 at Lincoln.

The Dragons, owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, have a promotion party in Las Vegas booked for next week, but Parkinson was wary of the outside perception of his players and wanted them to finish the season with victory.

Elliot Lee and Ryan Longman got the goals as the visitors ended their League One campaign in impressive fashion.

Parkinson said: “We wanted to finish in a professional manner and we spoke to the lads about that.

“The perception of the group, the celebrations last week and jetting out to Vegas next week, in between that we wanted to finish the season well.

“Ninety-two points from 46 games, I’m really pleased with that and I’m delighted with 26 points from our last 11 away games. That’s a fantastic return at any level of football.

“I’m so pleased with the goals. They were such good goals.

“Elliot’s ninth goal of the season. I’m really pleased for El because he had his car crash (in February) and hasn’t been in the team as much as he would have liked. He’s never stopped having a smile on his face and he deserved that moment.

Looking ahead to the summer and planning for the Championship, Parkinson added: “It’s difficult to say how quickly we’ll move because we’ve got a lot of thinking to do.

“We’ve got to sit down. We had a brief chat last night. The next couple of days we need to go through the numbers and look
at what we need to do to be competitive and strong next season.”

Watch: Wrexham celebrate promotion in style with win at Lincoln

Lincoln ended their campaign with defeats to third-placed Stockport and promoted Wrexham.

Boss Michael Skubala said: “You always know against Wrexham if you don’t score they will catch you.

“We didn’t finish where we wanted to finish, but I’m proud of the lads. We’ve been a match for everyone this season.

“We got a top-half finish so for a club of our size against the size of some of the clubs in this division it’s still success.

“We want to keep pushing, we want to do more. Now we rest and start to move in the window and get to the start line and start again.

“We need to keep growing and we need to keep moving.

“We have some exciting, young talent and we need to keep nurturing it.”