Five years ago, Stockport County needed saving. Which makes where they are now all the more remarkable.
With the administrators fended off in 2009, the 140-year old Greater Manchester club were languishing down in the sixth tier of English football, a long way from the heady days of eighth-placed Championship finishes and League Cup semi-finals of the late 1990s.
Having waited so long for someone to inspire a phoenix-like rise, like Stagecoach buses, two came along at once. Local businessman Mark Stott provided the finance and the passion to resurrect this sleeping giant of the lower leagues, while director of football Simon Wilson brought the brains and the vision.
Two spells working with David Moyes at Preston and Sunderland and with a data-sceptical Harry Redknapp gave Wilson plenty of ideas that have helped drive change at Stockport, but it is over a decade at Manchester City, with the Premier League behemoth itself and its affiliate clubs around the world, that provided a blueprint of how a successful team, at any level, should be run.
“I think when you build a club up from any position, you have got hardware and software,” Wilson tells i. “You have to get the hardware in place so that you’re ready for the growth.
“Our end goal is to finish higher than our best-ever Championship position and it has been my job to make sure we’ve been Championship ready, in all areas, from the very beginning.
“When Abu Dhabi United Group bought City, the club were a lower to mid-table Premier League team and had ambitions to penetrate the top 10 at a stretch. So they thought, ‘how do we turn this into a Champions League club?’ Even then.
“I worked with all areas of the club to grow the football operation with Brian [Marwood, City Football Group’s managing director] to a Champions League level. We went around the world and looked at the best practices from all the top clubs.
“We did a huge Academy review, huge training ground review, huge medical team review, recruitment review, and then we build out all these departments.
“I’m still inspired by what they do and how they go about things. Yes, there are some controversial elements but in terms of vision and ambition, they are still world-leading.”
To do what Stockport do, with City a ranging Ederson pass in one direction and Manchester United a Peter Schmeichel long throw in the other, is not easy.
Yet, even as they dropped down the leagues, their vociferous support never wavered. The opposite in fact, with the club boasting the second-highest average attendance in League Two. Giving their loyal fanbase more to cheer is important to Wilson and Stott, meaning those additional advantages off the pitch, as City have showed with their incredible infrastructure projects as well as their transfer outlay, can make all the difference, at any level.
“We only lost one training day to the winter this year because we’ve got pitch covers and enough groundstaff to put them on,” Wilson explains of the club’s Carrington base, leased from City, which is a far cry from other League Two facilities. “That gives us a big advantage going into some games.
“We have generations of fans in a large community. People in Stockport are proud of the club and it shows. Anyone who has been to a night game at Edgeley Park sees that. But we can still do more to attract even more supporters by keeping doing what we are doing, in any way we can.”
Continuing on their upward trajectory will only help that goal. Now Salford City and their Class of ’92 backing stand in Stockport’s way as the Hatters aim for a third promotion in five seasons.
Salford have also risen quickly through the divisions, helped by wealthy backers from the red half of Manchester. But there is no added incentive for Wilson, even given his continued affection for City and all he learned in East Manchester.
Salford do things their way. He does things his. And Stockport stand on the cusp of the third tier once more as a result.
“I have nothing but respect for what Salford have done,” he adds. “They have achieved a lot in a short space of time. Yes, they ploughed a lot of money into it, but they have taken the club on that journey.
“I went to university with [United director of football] John Murtough and [Academy manager] Nick Cox. I have connections at United too. It is important to keep relationships with big local clubs for Stockport to be able to do what we do.
“I think you can say we are ahead of schedule on the plan we wrote four years ago. Sometimes things happen quickly in football. Look at Luton. Mark has a long-term investment and plan – hopefully this is just the beginning.”
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