Stockport County’s ground is the only one I have visited with both my EFL club (Charlton) and my non-league club (Leamington), the latter in the National League North.
Simon Wilson was City Football Group’s (CFG) strategy and
performance manager in a former life but, after moving into consultancy work
for clubs around Europe, he was introduced to local property magnate Mark
Stott.
A City season ticket holder, Stott wanted to invest in a
football club and commissioned Wilson with the task of assessing the market.
Despite Stockport only just picking themselves up from their lowest ebb —
finally earning promotion from the National League North in 2019 — Wilson
recommended them.
It had that nice combination of being almost like a
start-up, but with loads of history and loads of potential,” Wilson says.
“There weren't massive skeletons in the closet, no big costs that you couldn't
deal with.”
The years of underachievement, which had seen the end of the
club’s professional status after more than a century of Football League
membership, left a relatively blank slate. “Almost everything you did was seen
as positive because it added to the club,” Wilson says. “If you’re higher, it’s
harder to do that.”
Not long after Stott’s takeover was completed in early 2020,
Stockport moved into a new training complex in Carrington — formerly City’s
base before their move to the purpose-built City Football Academy.
“We actually use the pitches that City won the Premier
League on for the first few times,” says Wilson, which was a particular
advantage during the National League days. “Whenever we brought a player to
look around, by the time you’d finished the walk around the pitches, they were ready
to sign."
Improving the training facilities was a key element of an
ambitious plan devised by Stott and Wilson before taking control. “It said,
with a fair wind, in seven years we could be in the Championship.”
They are right on schedule, ahead of it even, after two
promotions in three years, with Challinor’s side currently sitting just outside
the play-off places in League One.
Stockport’s greater size and resources relative to rivals
in League Two and the National League helped. Attendances were
touching five figures in the fourth tier last season, but as Stockport have
climbed the ladder, those advantages have evened out. “For the first time in a few years, we knew
we weren’t going to be in the top three spending clubs in the league. We’re not
even top five,” says Wilson.
But in many ways, Wilson is still aiming for the same target
that he was when walking into a fifth-tier club.
“It’s not like you wait until you get to the Championship to
start looking and behaving like a Championship club,” he says. “You do that
from day one and then you get the benefit: all the infrastructure, the extra
coaching, the facilities while you’re in the lower leagues. That has probably
made the difference.”
All that has been achieved despite the proximity to United
and City, but Wilson only sees positives in that proximity, whether that’s
through the relationships maintained with both clubs, the cross-pollination of
staff, the City youngsters who visit Stockport’s training base for the
experience of playing against senior opposition, or indeed being able to train
on City’s pitches in preparation.
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