Rob McElhenney “devastated” over double Wrexham exit including favourite player
Ben Tozer and Luke Young left Wrexham in the summer and the departures of the long-serving pair has left Dragons co-owner Rob McElhenney “devastated”
Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney has confessed he was “devastated” when club stalwarts Ben Tozer and Luke Young left the team last summer.
Alongside Hollywood A-lister Ryan Reynolds, the “It’s Always Sunny” star has been instrumental in turning around the fortunes of the Red Dragons since their 2020 takeover. The Welsh side has seen two promotions since then, with this season marking their first time competing in League One in 20 years.
Tozer and Young were key figures in Wrexham’s rise to the EFL’s third tier, earning themselves legendary status at the Racecourse Ground for their efforts. However, both players departed at the end of last season, with Tozer moving to Forest Green Rovers and Young signing for Cheltenham Town.
Tozer made a significant impact during his three-year stint at Wrexham from 2021 to 2024, making 136 appearances and netting seven goals. Young, on the other hand, played 252 games and scored 23 goals over six seasons between 2018 and 2024.
Now, McElhenney has opened up about how the loss of these two key players affected him. Speaking on Men in Blazers, he said: “One of the very few downsides of becoming so personally close with the players is that you have to say goodbye to everybody at some point.”
“Ultimately, that’s a metaphor for life in general which is that people come and people go,” he remarked as he opened up about his sense of loss over the duo parting ways with the club after such a long run. “But when you put so much value on the relationships that you have with people, to say goodbye is very difficult.”
“We have had so many valleys along the way, in so far as we started the conversation talking about Ben Tozer and Luke Young, who is my favourite player and I was very public in stating that! That’s not a slight to the other players, I just loved Luke, he was our longest-tenured players, he was with us from the very beginning, so to say goodbye to him was devastating devastating.”