Wrexham pay £8m for Anthony Patterson, and break their transfer record on a goalkeeper
Wrexham have made Sunderland’s Anthony Patterson the most expensive signing in their history, three days before the Championship season starts. Phil Parkinson, who gave the goalkeeper his debut at Sunderland in 2020, is the manager who signed him.
Aug 12, 2026
Wrexham have broken their transfer record on a goalkeeper. Anthony Patterson joined from Sunderland on 11 August for a reported £8 million, three days before the Championship season starts and six before Wrexham play their first match of it.
Eight million pounds is a strange amount of money to spend on a second-tier goalkeeper, and that is rather the point. It is more than Wrexham have ever paid for anyone, beating the £7.5m that took Nathan Broadhead to the Racecourse Ground, and both of those fees can rise again through add-ons. Patterson has signed until June 2030.
A Sunderland player his whole life, until now
Patterson is 26 and had been at Sunderland since he was ten. He signed his first professional contract in 2019, made his debut in an EFL Trophy tie at Fleetwood Town in November 2020, and finished with 169 competitive appearances for the club. He was in goal for the League One promotion in 2022 and part of the squad that won the 2025 Championship play-off final against Sheffield United, the win that put Sunderland back in the Premier League. He spent last season on loan at Millwall, and has one England Under-21 cap, won against Japan in 2023.
The Fleetwood debut is the detail that explains a lot about this deal. The manager who picked an untried 20-year-old that night was Phil Parkinson, then in his last weeks at Sunderland. Parkinson has managed Wrexham since 2021 and has now spent his club’s record fee on the same goalkeeper, six years on.
“He’s a young keeper, but with a lot of experience at Championship level,” Parkinson said. Patterson’s own line was blunter about where he thinks this goes: “I want to play in the Premier League with Wrexham.”
The first season Wrexham have not gone up
That ambition is not the fantasy it would have been a few years ago, but last season was the first proper check on it. Wrexham had climbed from the National League to the Championship in consecutive promotions under Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s ownership, and then finished seventh in their first season at the level, outside the play-off places.
Seventh in the Championship as a newly promoted club is a good season by any normal standard. It was also the first time since 2021-22, when they lost a National League play-off semi-final to Grimsby Town, that a Wrexham season ended without a promotion, and £8m on a goalkeeper reads like the response of a club that did not enjoy the novelty.
What Sunderland get out of it
For Sunderland this is a Premier League club cashing in on an academy graduate who had become a backup. He played most of those 169 games in League One and the Championship, and the loan to Millwall told its own story about where he sat in the order once Sunderland went up.
Wrexham start at Cardiff City on 17 August, an all-Wales fixture at 8pm, before their first home match against Watford on 22 August. Whether Patterson goes straight in is Parkinson’s call, though clubs do not usually spend a record fee on a substitute.