Wrexham have made a club-record initial signing to bring in Sunderland goalkeeper Anthony Patterson on a four-year contract.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old arrives after losing his place following Sunderland\u2019s return to the Premier League. Patterson had previously been central to their promotion from the Championship two seasons ago, before spending the January window on loan at Millwall, where he played 14 times as the Lions reached the playoffs.<\/p>\n
His move also makes him Wrexham\u2019s third addition of the summer, after Crystal Palace defender Danny Imray and Preston North End midfielder Ben Whiteman joined the club.<\/p>\n
Patterson said: \u201cWrexham really suits me in terms of what I want to do in my career, so it feels like a perfect fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen the journey the club has been on, and it\u2019s really exciting to now be part of it. I want to play in the Premier League with Wrexham, and I think everything is in place and ready for the club to do that. I\u2019m really looking forward to playing in front of our fans, pushing up the league and getting this football club to where it deserves to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manager Parkinson had been searching for a new first-choice goalkeeper throughout the summer, with talks over Patterson\u2019s arrival beginning at the start of the transfer window. He added: \u201cWe\u2019re delighted to welcome Anthony to the football club. He\u2019s a young keeper, but with a lot of experience at the Championship level, and we look forward to working with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The signing is likely to affect at least one of Wrexham\u2019s current goalkeepers. Arthur Okonkwo remains highly popular after helping secure two straight promotions from League Two, while Danny Ward was brought in as first choice a year ago. Parkinson also rates Callum Burton, the club\u2019s third-choice keeper.<\/p>\n
Patterson\u2019s numbers last season underline why Wrexham moved for him. He posted a 73.9% save percentage, ahead of Okonkwo\u2019s 67.9% and Ward\u2019s 67.6%. He also prevented 1.08 more goals than expected in his 14 Championship appearances, compared with Okonkwo\u2019s 2.09 goals conceded above xGOT and Ward\u2019s 0.18 goals prevented in eight league games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wrexham have broken their transfer record to sign Sunderland goalkeeper Anthony Patterson on a four-year deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[689,1421],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sunderland","category-wrexham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}