Sunday Reckoning: The Continuing Decline of Stockport County

A Slow Collapse

For a few minutes on Tuesday evening, it looked as though the trapdoor had finally opened. With Stockport County a goal down at Gateshead and relegation rivals Tamworth leading against Ebbsfleet United, the club was heading for the Blue Square Bet North. Then, a late Ebbsfleet equaliser, followed by a stoppage-time leveller from Stockport’s Adnan Cirak, applied the defibrillator to a disastrous season. The club remains in the Blue Square Bet Premier, but the stay of execution may only last until Sunday.

This is not a sudden calamity. It is the culmination of more than a decade of decline that began when the club was a fixture in what is now the Championship. In April 2009, with debts of £7.8 million, Stockport County entered administration. At least then they were still a League One club. Two successive bottom-place finishes saw them relegated from the Football League in 2011, ending a 106-year stay.

The roots of this crisis run deep into the club’s governance and finances. The loss of ownership of both Edgeley Park and its training ground in 2002 stripped the club of key assets. A 2003 sale to Brian Kennedy, benefactor of the Sale Sharks rugby club, was followed two years later by a deal with the Supporters Trust. Kennedy sold the club to the Trust for a nominal £1 but retained ownership of the ground, taking on £4.5m of debt in return. The Trust was left with a ten-year option to buy back the ground but struggled with spiralling costs and a contract that left the club with little income from its own home. A ruinous loan taken out in 2008 sealed its fate, leading directly to administration.

The Promise of Saviours

Post-administration, a new ownership consortium, the 2015 Group, took control. Hopes for a quick return to the Football League were briefly raised by the arrival of Liverpool businessman Tony Evans as chairman-in-waiting, who installed former Liverpool midfielder Dietmar Hamann as manager. But this was a false dawn. Concerns were soon raised by director Lord Peter Snape over a £200,000 sum Evans wanted existing shareholders to contribute, and by September 2011 the deal was dead. Hamann was gone two months later.

The club has since lurched from one plan to the next. Some brief good news arrived in November last year when an agreement was reached with Brian Kennedy’s company, Cheshire Sport, to run Edgeley Park on a day-to-day basis. With Sale Sharks having moved elsewhere, the deal reduced County’s rent by almost two-thirds and handed over control of the stadium for the first time in nearly a decade.

This being Stockport County, the stability did not last.

Chaos in the Dugout

In January, vice-chairman Spencer Fearn appointed Ryan McKnight as the club’s CEO. Within days, manager Jim Gannon, in his second spell, had left the club. Gannon’s position had seemed precarious after then-chairman Lord Snape directed some sharp words his way following a December loss to Woking.

I’m getting pretty fed up of watching part-time teams beat Stockport County… Jim Gannon’s pretty good at telling me how this club should be run. Well I’m going to tell him that I’m not impressed by the way the team is being run.

Supporters were angered, but the choice of replacement was more surprising. Bosnian-Swiss coach Darije Kalezic, with no experience in English football, was appointed in what Fearn described as a “reflection of the future direction of the club.” After just one win in nine matches, Kalezic was gone last month. His replacement, Ian Bogie, has managed two wins from his six matches in charge. Meanwhile, Lord Snape has further antagonised supporters by claiming that directors have received “death threats.”

Despite it all, the fans have kept coming. An average attendance of 3,780 is the second highest in the division. It seems scarcely credible that just eleven years and one month ago, Stockport County beat Manchester City 2-1 in a league match. Now, with Manchester City preparing for an FA Cup Final, Stockport’s supporters face the prospect of trips to Solihull Moors and Vauxhall Motors. To survive, they must win at Kidderminster Harriers, who themselves need a victory to keep their own title hopes alive. A draw will not be enough.