Good things are happening in Stockport. Promotion back to the EFL in 2022 was followed by a League Two title win last season. Can Dave Challinor lead Stockport County back to the Championship for the first time in 23 years?
Recent years have been kind to Stockport County fans. Three league titles in six seasons have been secured, and they’ve risen three league tiers to rightfully take their place in League One for 2024-25. Those supporters may now be enjoying the highs, but they have only come after some exceptional lows.
After 106 consecutive years of Football League membership, Stockport dropped out of the EFL in 2010-11 as they finished bottom of League Two. Then followed 11 years in non-league, with more than half of those in the sixth tier of the English football pyramid, battling away in the National League North.
There’s a long story to be told of inadequate ownership, administration, points deductions and a loss of full-time status as a club, but that’s not a story for us to tell. Instead, we look at how Stockport have got to where they are today under the management of Dave Challinor and how they intend to keep rising up the EFL.
When Challinor took the reins at the start of November 2021, Stockport were ninth in the National League table after 13 matches of a 44-game season. After his appointment, they won the most points in the league (74) and won the title by six points, ahead of Wrexham, who, of course, were super-charged by Hollywood riches.
Since winning promotion back to the EFL after longer than a decade in non-league, it was widely expected that Stockport would potentially have a few seasons of consolidation. The truth has been far from it.
Heartache in 2022-23 after a penalty-shootout defeat in the League Two play-off final against Carlisle United was followed by the league title in 2023-24, which featured a 12-game winning streak between mid-September and mid-November, equalling the fourth-tier record for consecutive wins set by Luton Town in April 2002.
Stockport ended last season by winning eight of their last nine League Two matches, only suffering defeat to Wrexham in the final game of the campaign in what was essentially a dead rubber, with the League Two title already wrapped up. They have continued that form into 2024-25, with three wins from three to start life back in the third tier of English football.
Since regaining their EFL status in the summer of 2022, Stockport have been one of the best-performing teams in England’s top four tiers.
Excluding teams new to the EFL this season, only Manchester City, Arsenal, Ipswich, Liverpool and Wrexham have a higher points-per-game ratio (1.89) and win rate (54.7%) in league games than Challinor’s side, while they’ve had one of the best defences.
No team have kept as many clean sheets (42) or have a higher proportion of matches with a clean sheet (44.2%), and only neighbouring Man City (0.67) have conceded fewer goals per game on average (0.89).
When businessman Mark Stott purchased the club in 2020, he devised a seven-year plan to get them back to the Championship. Four years in, and with two promotions since, they are now just one step away from achieving that goal. Not since a five-season spell between 1997-98 and relegation in 2001-02 have the Hatters been at that level of the pyramid, but their fantastic start to the season has fans dreaming of completing that seven-year plan two years early.
It’s hardly rocket science that a team efficient in both defence and attack will perform well in the league table, but that’s what Stockport were in League Two last season on the way to winning the title.
No side scored as many non-penalty goals as they did (89), while winning 10 penalties also helped (only Accrington won more – 11). They also conceded the fewest non-penalty goals (45) alongside Mansfield.
Those numbers were no fluke, either. Stockport conceded shots worth just 38.5 expected goals (xG) overall in League Two last season – at least 5 xG better than the next best, Wrexham (43.6), while they allowed the opposition only 405 non-penalty shots, 81 fewer than anyone else.
In attack, they maximised their chances of scoring by creating high-quality chances. Both their non-penalty shot conversion rate (14.4%) and average non-penalty xG per shot (0.12) were the second highest in the division behind Mansfield.
While not a particularly aggressive high-pressing team, Stockport did score 10 times from high turnovers in League Two across 2023-24, which was below only Notts County and MK Dons (11).
Their attacking output was certainly helped by having so much of the ball in dangerous areas.
Field tilt measures territorial dominance between teams, looking at the share of possession each team has in their attacking third compared to their opponent. A field tilt of over 50% means you make more passes in the opposition’s final third than the opposition make in your defensive third.
Stockport had the highest in League Two last season (62.6%). That’s fallen to 55.2% this season, but a drop is to be expected after moving up a league, and it’s still positive compared to their opponents.
Aerial dominance was also key to their promotion-winning season in 2023-24. No side in England’s top four tiers scored more headed goals last season than Stockport (22), while only Liverpool (57%) won a higher proportion of their aerial duels across the pitch than the League Two champions (56%) – an average that’s increased to 57% this season in League One.
This aerial presence also made them an extremely dangerous attacking side at corners. Only Walsall (19) scored more goals following corners (17) last season in League Two, while Stockport (119) trailed only Mansfield (140) for total shots following corners. The Hatters (49) also placed just behind Mansfield (51) and Sutton (50) for first contact at corners.
An interesting quirk from Stockport’s title-winning season is that they didn’t have a standout chance creator, which is rare for a side that’s performed so well across a season.
No Stockport player featured inside the top 40 players for most open-play chances created overall, and none were in the top 20 on a per-90 basis (of players to play 1,000+ minutes). One explanation for this is that the highest Stockport player in those rankings, Louie Barry (1.5 per 90), missed nearly five months of 2023-24 with a hamstring injury.
Barry, on loan from Aston Villa for a second successive season, is the jewel in Stockport’s crown. An outstanding talent, and arguably considered to be one of the best players outside the top two tiers of English football, he is now injury free and powering Stockport’s fantastic start to life back in League One.
The 21-year-old has scored in all three of Stockport’s League One games this season – the only player to score a non-penalty goal in each of the three matchdays – and has been having his own ‘goal of the season’ competition, with superb strikes versus Cambridge, Blackpool and Bristol Rovers.
Deployed on the left side of attacking midfield in a 4-2-3-1 formation, Barry’s trickery is the perfect accompaniment for the threat posed by Kyle Wootton as striker.
After back-to-back National League campaigns with 15+ goals for Notts County, Challinor signed the forward on a free transfer ahead of Stockport’s first campaign back in the EFL in 2022-23. Since then, Wootton’s repaid his faith by scoring 22 goals across two seasons in League Two and a further two so far this season – all have come inside the box and half of those (12) have been headers.
There was some surprise when Stockport were able to sign Oliver Norwood in the summer. Although now reaching the twilight years of his career at 33 years old, Norwood played 27 times in the Premier League for Sheffield United last season before ending his six-year association with the club at the end of 2023-24 following his contract expiry.
After missing their opening three competitive games of the season, Norwood was handed his first start in last weekend’s 2-0 win over Bristol Rovers and showed the quality he can bring to a League One side.
He led the match rankings for both touches (109) and passes (89) – only one midfielder has made more passes and had more touches in a league game for Stockport since their promotion back to the EFL in 2022 – while he also ranked top for his team in tackles (3) and interceptions (2).
Another interesting addition to Stockport’s squad this summer was that of goalkeeper Corey Addai from fellow promoted side Crawley Town.
As we’ve already said, Stockport’s defence last season was among the best, while Ben Hinchliffe did an admirable enough job with his shot-stopping, conceding 48 goals (excluding own goals) from shots worth 48.9 expected goals on target (xGOT). But you’re comparing this to some out-of-this-world statistics for Addai.
The Jamaican goalkeeper was kept constantly busy last season at Crawley, with the playoff winners allowing opponents more shots on target per game (5.5) than any other side, with 3.6 per game coming inside the penalty area. Addai made a league-high 189 saves and his save ratio of 77% was lower than only Wrexham’s Arthur Okonkwo (78%). But most impressive were his goals prevented numbers.
Based on Opta’s xGOT model, Addai faced shots on target that the ‘average’ goalkeeper was expected to concede between 74-75 goals from (74.4 xGOT), but he conceded just 53 goals – keeping out 21 goals more than expected. That was the best performance of any goalkeeper across England’s top four tiers last season, more than double the goals prevented total of any other player.
Now, one issue with the goals prevented metric is that it often favours goalkeepers who face a lot of shots. With more shots to deal with, they have more opportunities to ‘prevent’ goals.
But we can guard against this problem by using something called goals prevented rate. This is calculated by taking expected goals on target (how many goals the average goalkeeper ‘should’ concede) and dividing that figure by goals conceded (how many the goalkeeper actually conceded). Goals prevented rate then tells us the number of goals the average goalkeeper would concede for every goal the goalkeeper in question actually concedes.
Addai’s goals prevented rate of 1.4 suggests that for every goal he conceded, the average goalkeeper would have conceded 1.4 goals. That might not sound like much, but over the course of a season it makes a big difference; for every 10 goals he let in, another average goalkeeper would concede 14.
Of course, winning three from three and being top after three matchdays of the season doesn’t mean that you’ll end up getting promoted. Only three of the 21 teams to win the first three matches in League One since 2014 have ended up winning promotion that season (Bolton in 2016-17, Wigan in 2017-18 and Hull in 2020-21) while none of the three teams to do it last season won promotion to the Championship (Bolton, Peterborough and Stevenage).
A good start often sets you up for a good season, though. Of those 21 teams, 10 have finished inside the top six that season, while no team to win their opening three games to a third-tier season have been relegated since Sheffield United in 1980-81.
Stockport County undoubtedly have a squad with talented players, while Challinor has proved himself to be an expert in promotion with title wins in both the National League and League Two across his three seasons in charge. Twenty-three teams have won back-to-back promotions from the fourth tier to the second tier in EFL history, with Luton being the last in 2018. Who’s to say Stockport County can’t be the next?
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