He’s been dubbed the ‘Special One’ by adoring supporters, boasts five promotions on his CV and is the only manager in the history of English football to lead a fourth-tier club to a major cup final at Wembley.
He has also become one of the unexpected stars in a Hollywood blockbuster, while the list of big-name counterparts he’s toppled during a near 22-year career in the dugouts of English football is led by Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger.
It’s no wonder that when they were asked by The Athletic about Phil Parkinson this weekend reaching the notable milestone of 1000 competitive games as a manager, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, his celebrity bosses at Wrexham of League One, offered their congratulations before simply adding: “Football is lucky to have him and his impact on Wrexham is already legend.”
A third successive promotion with Wrexham is firmly in Parkinson’s sights after Saturday’s 1-0 home win against Peterborough United, with the north Wales side in third place in the third tier, level on points with Wycombe Wanderers in second — testament not only to the quality of his player recruitment, but also the 57-year-old’s ability to engender a sense of belief so overwhelming that even the most experienced footballers find themselves being swept along.
“The belief the gaffer has created here is incredible,” says Steven Fletcher, a 33-cap Scotland international, whose career saw him play for seven years in the Premier League before joining Wrexham, then in the fourth division, 16 months ago.
“In one of my first games after signing, we went one or two goals down. I’m sitting there on the bench, thinking, ‘Oh no’, but I then turned to the players next to me and they’re all saying, ‘We’ll come back and win this’. That belief is all down to the gaffer. It’s why I always say to anyone who asks for tickets to come and watch us, ‘You need to stay to the end’.”
Ryan Barnett may be towards the other end of the career scale from 37-year-old Fletcher, the wing-back having joined from fellow non-League side Solihull Moors a little under two years ago with a view to progressing up the divisions with Wrexham, but he’s no less enamoured with Parkinson.
“I remember our first conversation when he wanted to sign me,” says the 25-year-old. “I asked him what sort of manager he is and he replied, ‘Honest’. That pretty much sums up how he is.”
As fans of the Welcome To Wrexham documentary series about the club will know, this ‘honesty’ can extend to Parkinson telling his players exactly what he thinks of performances, regularly with a few expletives thrown in. Even these, though, come from a good place.
“I have a few times, yes,” Barnett replies with a smile when asked if he’s felt the hot blast of the Parkinson ‘hairdryer’ treatment in the past. “It’s not great and I’m hoping to avoid it for the rest of the season, but it’s all done so honestly that you take it. What he’s saying is said with love. He’s not being mean to you, he just wants the best for you and the team.”
Parkinson has brought up his 1,000th game in senior management (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
Lee Butler spent nine years working under Parkinson at four different clubs. So, when trying to understand what makes the Lancashire-born former Reading midfielder tick in a managerial sense, there’s probably no better place to start than with the now-retired goalkeeping coach.
“Phil is incredibly thorough,” says Butler, 58. “Works so, so hard. Never misses an opportunity to scout a prospective signing or an opposition. No matter the distance, or the fact he won’t get back home until the early hours, he will be there.
“He’s loyal, too, and once you have his trust, he leaves you to it. That’s not always a given in football. Some managers see themselves as the best fitness coach, the best goalkeeping coach, the best coach driver and so on.
“As people will have seen in the documentary, Phil also still has that massive fire within him to win, even after 1,000 games.”
Parkinson will have to wait to be inducted into the League Managers Association’s official Hall of Fame for reaching such a major milestone. This is due to the managers’ trade union not recognising matches played below the EFL level, meaning his two seasons in the fifth-tier National League with Wrexham are excluded from his total.
What isn’t in doubt, however, is how successful his methods have proved down the years.
They were initially honed at Colchester United, the Essex minnows having turned to a then-rookie 35-year-old when staring relegation from League One in the face in February 2003.
“Strong motivational skills” were cited by former Colchester director John Worsp as a big reason behind Parkinson’s appointment and the board’s faith proved well-placed. First, Parkinson kept Colchester up and then, a couple of years later, he led them to promotion into the second tier of English football for the first and only time in their now 87-year history.
“Getting a small club like Colchester into the Championship is incredible,” says Aidan Davison, who is now on the coaching staff at Wrexham but was then Parkinson’s first-choice goalkeeper. “Teams didn’t want to come to Layer Road (Colchester’s home ground at the time). We could bully teams and that was down to the lads Phil brought in.”
Parkinson’s managerial career began with Colchester almost 22 years ago (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
Savvy recruitment has, indeed, been a big feature of Parkinson’s career. Even on the rare occasions when he’s failed in a job, such as at Hull City where he lasted just 159 days after arriving from Colchester in the summer of 2006, there has been a tangible legacy left behind, with Sam Ricketts, Dean Marney and Michael Turner all helping the Yorkshire club get promoted to the Premier League a couple of years after being signed on his watch.
Parkinson’s problem at Hull was the team’s results. Just four of his 21 Championship games were won, culminating in the nadir of a horrible 5-1 defeat away to Colchester in the November. He was gone a few days later.
“Phil seemed the perfect fit for Hull City,” recalls Adam Pearson, who as Hull chairman paid Colchester £530,000 in compensation for Parkinson. “We were a hard-working Championship team who needed a hard-working, proper manager who refused to suffer fools.
“That’s what we got in Phil, but things just didn’t work out. We tried everything to make it work, including changing the backroom staff. Phil Brown came in as Phil’s assistant to lighten the mood, as things had all got a bit intense.
“Maybe if we had changed the staff earlier… I look at Wrexham and Phil’s assistant Steve Parkin, who worked under Browny here at Hull. Steve has just the right personality to complement Phil’s abilities.”
Bradford, West Yorkshire. March 17, 2013. Midnight.
Three weeks after making history by appearing in the League Cup final at Wembley as a fourth-division side, having beaten three Premier League opponents in Wigan Athletic, Arsenal and (over two legs in the semi-finals) Aston Villa to get there, the play-off hopes of Parkinson’s Bradford City team seem to be in tatters, with a 4-1 defeat away to Exeter City leaving them 10 points adrift in 12th place with just nine regular-season games remaining.
Mark Lawn, Bradford’s co-chairman, has made the long journey back from Devon with the squad on the team coach. The mood is understandably downcast after just one win in seven league matches either side of that Wembley meeting with Swansea City of the top flight, which also ended in defeat.
“I remember getting on the bus and thinking, ‘We’ve blown the play-offs’,” Lawn says. “It was a very quiet drive home until Phil got everyone together just as we were coming back into Bradford.
“By now, it’s very late and everyone’s chins are on the floor. Phil starts talking, reminding the lads of the special things they’d already achieved. I looked around the lads and could see the words were really hitting home. As they got off the coach a few minutes later, there was a spring in their step. It was amazing.
“We beat Wycombe in our next game after Exeter and never looked back, eventually winning promotion back at Wembley (Bradford finished seventh, the fourth and final play-off spot, but beat Northampton Town 3-0 in the play-off final).
“Phil could be difficult at times, like a lot of ex-footballers, and there were a few fall-outs (with the board) in his five years, but things like Exeter showed how great he is as a leader.”
Parkinson celebrates leading Bradford to victory in the 2013 League Two play-off final (Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)
That 2013 promotion was the second of his career. Another followed, from League One, four years later with Bolton Wanderers, while the past two seasons have of course seen Parkinson take Wrexham from non-League to that same third tier.
His cup adventures include Bradford beating Wenger’s Arsenal on penalties in the quarter-finals on that 2012-13 League Cup run and Mourinho’s title-bound Chelsea 4-2 at Stamford Bridge in the 2014-15 FA Cup, the latter leading Bradford fans to dub him the ‘Special One’ in a play on his Chelsea counterpart’s nickname.
There have been difficult times, too, such as when Parkinson was sacked by Sunderland, then of League One, in November 2020 after just 13 months and the financial meltdown at Bolton that almost saw a club who were among the Football League’s founding members in 1888 disappear for good.
“How Phil kept going at Bolton, I don’t know,” adds Butler, who was on his coaching team there. “So many times, we wouldn’t get paid. Phil had to deal with all these people — staff as well, not just the players — who didn’t have the money to pay the mortgage or the bills.
“To keep his sanity, being decent round the place, amid all that was going on, shows he has a lot of substance. Only once the club had been sold could Phil walk away.”
Parkinson’s liberal use of the f-word in the dressing room has turned him from solely a football figure into one recognised by the wider public.
This much was evident one Friday last season when he featured on Channel 4 show Gogglebox, where families and friends from around the UK are filmed in their homes, watching and commenting on that week’s TV highlights. As Welcome To Wrexham footage was shown on screen, one of Gogglebox’s cast quipped: “He’s the Gordon Ramsay of the football world is Phil Parkinson!”
Butler laughs at that description before adding: “People might not believe me, but I’d say he’s calmed down quite a bit since I first worked under him at Bradford, certainly in terms of going after individual players. He used to hammer (strikers) James Hanson and Nahki Wells. He thought they both were the sort of characters who needed a bit of a kick, calling them all sorts. He’d definitely toned that down by the time I joined him at Wrexham.”
Not that these half-time blasts have always gone to plan.
Butler adds: “There was an FA Cup tie at (non-League) Aldershot with Bradford (in November 2015). It was 0-0 at half-time and Phil wasn’t happy with Reidy (winger Kyel Reid).
“He went to have a go at him and stamped his foot really hard, as if to emphasise the point he was making. Me and Steve (Parkin) could see something wasn’t quite right, as he’s suddenly walking funny.
“Steve waited until the lads had gone back out for the second half before asking, ‘You OK, gaffer?’. Turns out Phil had done his back stamping down on the floor. I can still see this pained expression on his face as he said, ‘I felt it go straight away’. He couldn’t let on to Reidy or any of the lads. He’d just had to grin and bear it until they’d gone back out.”
There have been no such problems since becoming Wrexham manager. Instead, Parkinson’s players talk warmly about the open dialogue that exists alongside those infamous half-time rockets.
“I know people will have seen him shouting on the documentary and, of course, that does happen,” says Barnett, League One’s top assist provider this season. “But he then speaks to you individually and explains calmly what he wants. The bottom line is if you go out there and make him happy, then you’re happy.”
GO DEEPER
Parkinson on 2024-25: ‘There’s a sense of realism – people see the spending power of teams’
(Top photo: Charlotte Tattersall/Getty Images)
