From 'Deadpool' cameo to outcast: Paul Mullin's fall at Wrexham underlines club's growing status

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He has been the goal-scoring poster boy of a Wrexham team soaring through England’s soccer leagues following its takeover by Hollywood celebrities.

There’s a giant mural of him in the center of the city.

He formed such a close bond with Ryan Reynolds, one of the club's owners, that he even appeared in the last “Deadpool” movie.

Now Paul Mullin is experiencing a negative side to Wrexham’s remarkable rise — the ambitious team looks to have outgrown him.

Mullin, the prolific striker who has been Wrexham’s player of the season in each of the last three years, hasn’t played a league game in nearly two months.

With Wrexham signing two strikers in the recent transfer window to boost its bid for promotion to the second-tier Championship, the 30-year-old Mullin has dropped down the pecking order and doesn’t even make the 18-man matchday squads for games these days.

It’s a sudden turn of events for a player who has had a leading role in the popular “Welcome to Wrexham” fly-on-the-wall documentary created by Reynolds and Rob McElhenney to follow their progress as rookie soccer club owners.

McElhenney once hailed Mullin as “one of the greatest football players in the world,” while a bromance with Reynolds saw Mullin land a cameo as the character “Welshpool” in the “Deadpool & Wolverine” hit movie.

Mullin even has written a book — entitled “My Wrexham Story” — that documents his time with the team since his transfer in July 2021, his career before moving to north Wales, and the lessons he learned from his young son’s Autism diagnosis which was the subject of an episode in “Welcome to Wrexham.”

His fall in status, then, might break the hearts of fans who have sung “Super Paul Mullin” chants inside the team's Racecourse Ground as the striker racked up more than 100 goals for Wrexham.

Chris Jones, a long-time Wrexham season ticket holder, attributes Mullin's struggles to the after-effects of undergoing minor spinal surgery during the summer, and a subsequent loss of confidence.

“He just doesn't look the same,” Jones said in a phone interview. "Whether it's that injury or a mental thing.

“You were thinking, ‘Well, is he going to get fit and come back to his best?’ But he got worse and worse. He looks like a player who is finished, who is gone."

For Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson, Mullin remains an option in an increasingly competitive squad — just not a no-brainer pick since the team signed Jay Rodriguez, a former Premier League player, and Sam Smith for 2 million pounds ($2.5 million) in January. Wrexham also has former Scotland international Steven Fletcher as a center-forward option.

“We’ve got a lot of strikers. It’s difficult," Parkinson said this month. "We can’t keep everyone involved. But we will keep assessing things, looking at training all the time and picking a team, and the bench, accordingly.”

Wrexham's squad must keep evolving. After all, the team was playing in the fifth tier — outside England's four professional leagues — just three years ago. Now, it might be a year and a half away from playing in the Premier League if the club continues on its remarkable trajectory.

With a little more than a month left of the regular season, Wrexham is in second place in League One, with the top two finishers gaining automatic promotion and the next four teams entering the playoffs.

On Saturday, Wrexham visits Exeter — with Mullin expected to be absent once again as speculation continues about his future.

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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer