HUMPHREY KER played a key role in identifying a suitable football club for Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds to buy and he gave the lowdown on why Wrexham was the perfect choice.

Executive director Ker, the Hollywood stars' 'man on the ground' at The Racecourse, instigated the takeover after working on McElhenney's hit show Mythic Quest.

But while the actors wanted to become club owners, they had to find a team and British comedian and writer Kerr drew up a list of criteria.

Although Wrexham are spending a 13th season in non-league, the club's fanbase and potential to attract even more supporters through the turnstiles had major pulling power for Ker.

"When this all felt like a bit of a pipe dream, one of the first contributions I made was draw up a list of between six and eight teams," said Ker.

"I created a document that gave scores for certain aspects of a football club; fanbase, facilities, geography.

"The geography one is quick and easy. There are 900,000 people in north Wales and there is one English Leagues-based full-time professional football club.

"We should be drawing in as many of these people as we possibly can. Understandably, lots of those folk go to Liverpool and Manchester but we think there is a huge, not untapped but semi-tapped, market that we can get stuck into.

"It has got a very loyal fan-base, huge numbers of people come here.

"Wrexham had more fans coming in than most League Two clubs, and some League One.

"It speaks to the huge affection fans that have for the team, even when they were having a petty torrid time last year."

Another lure was Wrexham's proud history.

"We started to look at Wrexham and the story of the giant-killings, great European adventures, all those fantastic characters Wrexham have had over the years like Dixie McNeil, Joey Jones and Mickey Thomas," said Ker.

"Those towering figures in the club's history, that spoke to Rob and got him really excited by it."

Finding a football club already heading in the right direction and with some recent success behind it was not an issue as far as Ker and the Hollywood A-listers were concerned.

He said: "It has been said: 'Why are you doing this? If you want to buy a football club and make a success of it, make money or make your name, you could start with this League Two club or this League One club. All they need is a helping hand to go from x to y'.

"But for us it wasn't about that. It was getting the narrative, the story, the excitement of taking a club that feels like it has been kicked in the pants a lot for the last 15-20 years, and yet still has thousands of people turning out every week."

Ker revealed facilities - and a training ground in particular - meant Wrexham's 'score' dropped but there was enough appeal for McElhenney and Reynolds to launch a takeover which was completed last week.

"Wrexham scored medium on facilities," said Ker. "It is brilliant in one aspect and terrible in another.

"They have got an incredible stadium that has so much history and has such huge capacity for a club at this level but we don't have a training ground.

"Other teams were a mixture of National League North and South teams, one or two others in the National League that we briefly considered and one or two in League Two.

"The idea was always to look in the lower leagues because the feeling is once you get up to League One, some have huge big stadiums and have many of the things that we are looking to bring to Wrexham.

"They don't need the help in the same way and our resources wouldn't go as far there.

"It was brought to our intention that having been in trouble, Wigan were available at a knock-down price but they have already got a fantastic stadium, academy and training ground, what can we add to that?

"We can pay for more players and things like that but that doesn't have the desired effect which we want which is to change the fabric of the club."