For Wrexham’s growing global fanbase, it’s set to be another heart-stopping end to the season.
This time, a place in the Premier League is at stake.
“I think a defibrillator is the traditional fifth season gift? Would make sense for this show,” Ryan Reynolds, the Hollywood celebrity who is a co-owner of the club, wrote on X in a nod to the “Welcome to Wrexham” series that has documented the team’s unprecedented journey up English soccer’s league pyramid.
The final step is the biggest one, though.
On Saturday, Wrexham heads into the final round of regular-season games in the second-tier Championship aiming to secure a place in the playoffs that will determine the last promotion spot to the Premier League.
The top two teams go up automatically — one of them is sure to be Coventry, which will finish first — and the teams finishing third to sixth will advance to the playoffs. With one match left, Wrexham is in sixth place.
That last playoff spot is a three-way contest between Wrexham, Hull (in seventh place, behind Wrexham on goal difference) and Derby (in eighth place, one point further back).
Wrexham has the toughest game — at home to fourth-place Middlesbrough, which needs to win to stand a chance of finishing in second spot.
Hull hosts ninth-place Norwich and Derby is at home to 15th-place Sheffield United.
Wrexham is already assured of the highest finish in its 162-year history — its previous best was 15th in the second tier in the 1978–79 season — but still possible is a fourth straight promotion that would be beyond the owners’ wildest dreams.
Three promotions in a row had never been done before in English soccer. So Wrexham, a club on so many people’s lips owing to its remarkable rise since being bought by Reynolds and Rob Mac (formerly McElhenney) in 2021, is well ahead of schedule.
“At the start of the season,” Wrexham midfielder Ollie Rathbone said, “everyone would have taken this scenario.”
All 12 of the matches in the Championship’s last round kick off at the same time.
It's also a huge, if not decisive, round in the Premier League for both the title race and battle to avoid relegation.
Arsenal — seeking to be English champion for the first time since 2004 — leads by three points from second-place Manchester City, which has a game in hand. Arsenal hosts Fulham on Saturday and City visits Everton on Monday night.
At the other end of the standings, third-from-last Tottenham — a top-flight team since 1978 — is in the relegation zone with four games left. Its next match is at Aston Villa on Sunday. Tottenham is two points behind West Ham, which visits Brentford on Saturday, and five points behind Nottingham Forest, which visits Chelsea on Monday.
Also notable is Manchester United's home game against rival Liverpool on Sunday. They are in third and fourth place, respectively, and both are bidding to tie up Champions League qualification.
It remains to be seen for how long Liverpool winger Mohamed Salah, who is leaving the club at the end of the season after nine years, will be sidelined after sustaining a hamstring injury last weekend.
Man City will be hoping Rodri is available to return from a muscle injury after missing the team's last two games.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Wrexham's Josh Windass gets away from Oxford United's Yunus Konak before scoring their first goal during the EFL Championship soccer match between Oxford United and Wrexham, Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in Oxford, England. (David Davies/PA via AP)
Wrexham's Josh Windass, right, celebrates with teammates after scoring their first goal during the EFL Championship soccer match between Oxford United and Wrexham, Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in Oxford, England. (David Davies/PA via AP)
Rob Mac, left, and Ryan Reynolds arrive at an FYC event for "Welcome to Wrexham" on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, at Chloe's at Golden Road Brewing in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
David Allan Coe, the country singer-songwriter who wrote the working class anthem “Take This Job and Shove It″ and had hits with “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” and “The Ride” among others, has died. He was 86.
Coe's wife, Kimberly Hastings Coe, confirmed his death to Rolling Stone on Wednesday.
She described him as one of the best singers and songwriters of our time.
“My husband, my friend, my confidant and my life for many years. I’ll never forget him and I don’t want anyone else to ever forget him either," she wrote to the publication.
A statement from a Coe representative to People said he died around 5 p.m. Wednesday. The cause of death wasn't disclosed.
Whether he was labeled outlaw or underground, Coe was clearly an outsider in Nashville's music establishment, even throughout his successes as an in-demand songwriter and singer, eventually developing a core following around his raw, often obscene lyrics and a checkered and somewhat mysterious past.
His wife posted on Facebook in September 2021 that he had been hospitalized with COVID-19 and he made few appearances since then.
He did concert tours with Willie Nelson, Kid Rock, Neil Young and others. He wrote “Take This Job and Shove It,” a hit by Johnny Paycheck in 1977, and “Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone),” a hit by Tanya Tucker in 1974. He was also the first country singer to record “Tennessee Whiskey,” penned by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, that has since become a genre standard and hits for George Jones and Chris Stapleton.
His own country hit recordings included “You Never Even Call Me by My Name,” written by Steve Goodman and an uncredited John Prine; “The Ride,” and “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile.” Coe also appeared in a handful of movies, including “Stagecoach” and “Take this Job and Shove It,” which was named after his song.
Coe, born in Akron, Ohio, spent time in reformatories as a youngster, and served time in an Ohio prison from 1963 to 1967 for possession of burglary tools. He also has said he spent time with the Outlaws motorcycle club, but some of the tales about his prison time and his personal life have been wildly exaggerated over the years.
“I’d have never made it through prison without my music,” he said in an AP interview in 1983. “No one could take it (music) away from me. They could put me in the hole with nothing to do but I could still make up a song in my head.”
He recorded his first album, a blues album called “Penitentiary Blues,” using songs that he wrote in prison. He later told reporters that he tried not to lean too heavily on prison as a topic for songs because of the similarities to the backstory of Merle Haggard, but that his criminal history was all people seemed interested in focusing on.
Coe recorded next for Columbia Records and did the album “The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy,” which became his nickname after performing in a rhinestone suit and wearing a mask.
During the heyday of the outlaw movement, Coe placed himself at the center of the scene, with songs like “Longhaired Redneck,” which featured lyrics about performing in dive bars, “Where bikers stare at cowboys who are laughing at the hippies who are praying they’ll get out of here alive.”
He was featured in the acclaimed documentary about the outlaw country movement called “Heartworn Highways,” in which he performs a concert at a Tennessee prison.
Coe, himself heavily tattooed and sporting long hair, claimed a diverse fan base that included bikers, doctors, lawyers and bankers. His last record, released in 2006, was a collaboration with Dimebag Darrell and other former members of the heavy metal group Pantera.
He released two R-rated albums, 1978′s “Nothing Sacred” and 1982′s “Underground Album,” that he sold via biker magazines. The songs on these albums have been criticized for being racist, homophobic and sexually explicit. He told “Billboard” magazine in 2001 that author and songwriter Shel Silverstein convinced him to record the songs he had written, something he had come to regret.
“Those were meant to be sung around the campfire for bikers, and I still don’t sing those songs in concert,” he said.
In 2016, Coe was ordered to pay the IRS more than $980,000 in restitution for obstructing the tax agency and was sentenced to three years’ probation. Court documents say Coe earned income from at least 100 concerts yearly from 2008 through 2013 and either didn’t file individual income tax returns or pay taxes when he did file.
FILE - David Allan Coe is pictured during an interview in Nashville, Tenn., May 9, 1983. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)
FILE - David Allan Coe, sporting Willie Nelson braids, performs at the Willie Nelson July 4th Picnic, on July 4, 1983 at Atlanta International Raceway in Hampton, Ga. (AP Photo/Rudolph Faircloth, File)
