Phil Parkinson said Wrexham AFC recruit was “ready to contribute” - he is a flop of the Reynolds, McElhenney era | OneFootball

Looking back at the biggest signing Wrexham's manager got wrong since the takeover

Since stepping in as Wrexham owners in November 2020, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have rarely made a signing that hasn’t been impactful on the club.

With the expertise of manager Phil Parkinson, the Red Dragons have made countless savvy investments that enabled this little Welsh side to have a meteoric rise up the EFL pyramid.

When you look at the impact that the additions of Paul Mullin, Arthur Okonkwo, Elliott Lee, and Ollie Rathbone, have made in the past and present, it’s easy to forget some of the signings that didn’t work out.

In recent times, there’s one striker in particular who seemed to have all the tools to thrive at Wrexham but didn’t.

Billy Waters’ resume before arriving at Wrexham

Like many of the club’s signings, Billy Waters came to Wrexham with a knack for finding the back of the net, scoring over 60 goals in the National League and League Two prior to joining the Red Dragons.

He arrived on March 22, 2023, to strengthen the club’s forward line and help get them over the line in the National League. At the time, Phil Parkinson couldn’t have been happier to add him to their ranks.

"I thought he was excellent last year for Halifax. I’ve watched him a lot, and he always looks dangerous around the penalty box. He scored 17 goals for them last season.

"Strikers are so important, you can never have enough in the building and Billy is ready to make a contribution," Parkinson said to the BBC.

Those may be the most famous or infamous last words the Wrexham boss would make about a player in recent times and, unfortunately, Parkinson would have to eat those words in the coming years.

At the time of Waters' arrival, Wrexham were in a dogfight with Notts County for promotion, with only the first-place team guaranteed passage into League Two. Paul Mullin was dealing with a knee injury, and the club figured Waters would be the guy to help get them out of the National League at long last.

Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, and as Parkinson and the club owners were about to discover, you can’t win them all.

Billy Waters' performances at Wrexham

There were plenty of expectations on the shoulders of Waters when he came to Wrexham, and he surely must have felt it himself.

Waters had scored nine goals in 32 League Two appearances at Barrow in 2022-23 before Wrexham signed him. At the same time, two of his best seasons as a professional came in the National League, netting 17 times in 44 league matches for Halifax Town in 2021-22 and scoring 11 in 37 domestic appearances at Cheltenham Town in 2015-16, helping them get promoted on that occasion.

His quality and experience at that level proved to be insufficient, as he only made one appearance for the Red Dragons in 2022-23. Across all competitions, he failed to make his mark, not scoring a single goal in a mere eight appearances for the club altogether.

It’s easy to look at the number of appearances he made with Wrexham and say that he didn’t get a fair shot to prove himself. At the same time, he rarely looked dangerous when he was on the field, failed to register an assist, and didn’t look all that skillful when he had the ball.

The good news for Red Dragons’ supporters is that Waters’ lack of quality at the club didn’t affect their promotional aspirations. Parkinson’s men made it to League One mainly without him, winning the National League in a near photo finish in 2022-23.

Waters was loaned to Doncaster Rovers in January 2024 and spent the rest of that campaign with them, making 11 appearances in League Two and failing to find the back of the net.

What Billy Waters has done since leaving Wrexham

During the recent winter transfer window, Waters left Wrexham for good, signing an 18-month contract with Oldham Athletic. Since arriving, he’s scored two goals in 13 National League contests.

Before that, he not only had a loan spell, as mentioned, with Doncaster, but also returned briefly to Halifax Town, where he again had decent success, scoring five National League goals to go along with one assist in 18 domestic appearances.

In general, Waters seemed a lot happier to be back at Halifax, where he’d scored some of the best goals of his career and experienced most of his big highlights.

He’s got an opportunity to impact Oldham right now, a side that appears to be headed to the National League play-offs, currently fourth in the table with 63 points. To his credit, Waters never seemed to be bitter about his time at Wrexham and didn’t speak ill of them either.

Just as he’s done nearly everywhere he’s gone, it seems he’s put that time behind him and focused on what’s ahead.

At 30, he still looks like he’s got something left to give, and he’s making a strong case to Oldham to prolong his contract beyond 18 months.

What went wrong for Waters at Wrexham

When you play as little as he did for Wrexham, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened and why it just didn’t work out for him in North Wales. That said, it never felt like he was a long-term solution to the club, but merely somebody who was there to fill in for a short time.

His fill-in time was less than stellar; from the get-go, it felt like a square peg in a round hole for him. The big question is, if that was the case, and it appeared it was, why hang onto him as Wrexham property for the next couple of years, especially if he wasn’t going to get playing time? The simple answer to that is probably to have an insurance policy just in case the club’s injury situation becomes so dire that they’d have to bring him back.

It is perhaps not a bad idea, as Wrexham have lost their share of key players over the past couple of seasons.

At the end of the day, though, from a Wrexham perspective, one has to evaluate his overall performance. As great as his attitude was, perhaps this was a club too big for him. Sure, Wrexham were in the National League when he arrived, but everyone knew that, with the club’s finances and the attention they were getting around the world, that their ambitions were far bigger than just winning that competition.

Being on a team that could be in the Premier League by 2026 is a lot to handle, and it seems like the Hollywood club was simply too big for the Epsom native to handle. Waters, after all, has played primarily in the fourth and fifth tiers of the EFL.

Even the top minds in football sometimes get it wrong, including Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson, who made his share of signings that proved to be flops, like Massimo Taibi, Juan Sebastian Veron, Kleberson and Ralph Milne, to name a few.

Parkinson and the Wrexham front office can count their lucky stars that Waters’ signing didn’t really set them back in terms of their ultimate goal.

Both sides seem to be in a better place since parting company.