What Birmingham City have said to Wrexham AFC about the fixture release - is it a cheeky dig? | OneFootball

Birmingham City's X admin has launched a cheeky dig at Wrexham with the release of the 2025-26 season's Championship fixture list.

Birmingham City's X account has launched a sly dig at rivals Wrexham, with the release of the 2025-26 Championship fixture lists.

Birmingham City and Wrexham's tussle at the top of the League One table throughout the 2024-25 season has formed something of a rivalry between the two clubs.

The Blues ended up claiming the League One title with a record-breaking 111 points, but Wrexham also followed them up to the Championship, albeit 19 points adrift of them, in second place in the table.

The new fixture list has provoked a dig at Wrexham from Birmingham

The release of the Championship fixture list for the 2025-26 season has prompted the Birmingham X account to make a bit of a joke at the expense of their Welsh rivals.

The message itself was fairly innocuous on the surface - "See ya real soon, Wrexham AFC" - but the joke was in the image which accompanied it, the two dates for the fixtures when they'll meet next season (the 4th October at The Racecourse Ground and the 11th April at St Andrew's) being positioned inside Mickey Mouse ears.

This can, of course, be taken two ways. On the one hand, the Disney reference can be interpreted as a reference to the company who have been screening the Welcome to Wrexham series with the club's owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, for the last three years.

But on the other, it could also be interpreted as calling them a "Mickey Mouse club", a common enough pejorative term for clubs that might be considered a little less important than your own.

A Birmingham-Wrexham rivalry is good for the fans... and good for business

To a point, both clubs are in need of a rivalry at the moment. Birmingham may be looking to close this gap as quickly as possible, but their traditional local rivals Aston Villa remain a division above them, having played Champions League football last season.

Wrexham's traditional local rivals are unlikely to be playing them again in the League in the near future. Chester finished in fourth place in the National League North at the end of last season, and were beaten in the play-off final by Scunthorpe United, so they remain four divisions below the Red Dragons.

Rivalries can be provoked by battles on the pitch, and they don't have to be geographically based. The rivalry between Coventry City and Sunderland, for example, can be traced back to one match in 1977, and something similar can be claimed for the rivalry between Brighton & Hove Albion and Crystal Palace.

Stoking these rivalries also makes pragmatic sense for clubs. Raising the profile of fixtures is good for business. It'll increase ticket sales and generate interest. And at a time when financial regulations mean that clubs really need to do whatever they can to maximise revenue, every little helps. Birmingham have had their dig; it now remains to be seen whether Wrexham will see fit to reply in kind.