History beckons once again this week for Wrexham.Friday’s trip to West Ham United, the first league meeting between the two clubs in a little over 45 years, seems certain to set a new record attendance for a match involving the Welsh side.Providing the previous best — the 54,096 crowd that packed into Liverpool’s Anfield for an FA Cup fourth-round tie in 1970 — is eclipsed at the London Stadium, it will be yet another indication of just how far Wrexham have come since the February 2021 takeover by Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds.Not even the club’s eight seasons competing in Europe between 1972 and 1995, when the opposition included famous old names such as Roma, Porto and Anderlecht, can compare to the ride supporters have been on these past few years.The players, too, have benefited, with the trip to West Ham and the largest stadium the second tier of English football has seen since the mid to late 1970s something to savour.“You want to play in big games,” says Matty James, Wrexham’s experienced midfielder who has previously played for Bristol City at the 62,500-capacity stadium built for the 2012 Olympics.“You want to play in the big stadiums and you want to play against the best players in the league. It is a great opportunity for us.”The ‘sold out’ signs have become a familiar sight for Wrexham fans in the Hollywood era.Not just at The Racecourse Ground, either, with the draw of a club given a global profile via Welcome to Wrexham often ensuring the opposition post either their biggest crowd of the season or one of the highest.Charlton Athletic are just one of many to have tapped into the interest generated by a documentary that was renewed for another three seasons earlier this year, the Londoners even selling half-and-half scarves in their official club shop when Phil Parkinson’s side visited The Valley in October 2024.The move upset Charlton fans, but the club’s then chief executive, Charlie Methven, was able to point subsequently to the 24,692 crowd — up a little under 10,000 on the season’s average at The Valley — including 1,650 tickets sold to international Wrexham fans (on top of the 2,647 supporters in the designated away seats) as justification.Methven also explained to the Where’s The Money Gone? podcast that a further 3,000 to 4,000 fans had attended from the Greater London area whose interest had been piqued by the documentary, while only 11 of the 300 half-and-half scarves in the shop remained unsold.West Ham were never going to be selling merchandise with the visitors’ name on. Even allowing for the move to the London Stadium that saw the much more earthy, if wonderfully atmospheric, Upton Park left behind, they just aren’t that sort of club.Is Tottenham’s stadium the best in Europe?Hannah Vanbiber and Rachael TindeNor were the Hammers — with 50,000 season ticket holders signed up despite dropping out of the Premier League in May — going to receive the kind of attendance bump that meant Wrexham’s visit to Cardiff City on the opening weekend was watched by 10,000 more fans than the next weekend home game in the Welsh capital, against Sheffield United.