Jim Gannon is ready to take the next step in order to fulfil Stockport’s promotion dream
JIM GANNON has called for Stockport County to move towards a full-time training programme to allow them to maintain their unlikely promotion push and build for a Football League return.
The Hatters are back in the National League after a six-year exile and sit outside the play-offs only on goal difference.
They’ve taken 20 points from their last ten matches as they’ve stormed up the division using largely the same squad which clinched the National League North title in April.
“We didn’t have the resources to sign the kind of full-time players that are throughout this league,” Gannon, in his third spell as manager of County, told The NLP. “We carried on with our group and they went and got us a reasonably good start, but we were conscious that the strength of the league would mean at some point we’d hit a bit of a wall.”
A six-game winless run, including five consecutive defeats, over September prompted Gannon to make some tweaks to his squad.
“I needed to strengthen,” he said, reflecting on the loan signings of midfielders Devante Rodney and Tom Walker from Salford City and Harrogate Town striker Joe Leesley, who are all set to return to their parent clubs at the turn of the year. “Since then we’ve merged our team from last year with those new loans and we just seem to have been getting stronger and stronger as the months have gone by.
Optimistic
“If the club supports me then there’s potential we can have an optimistic and positive new year. Going forwards, if we want to become increasingly competitive we’ll need to maintain those extra few players whether it be on loan or permanent signings.” Stockport are one of few teams in the National League who are not full-time and instead train on Tuesday and Thursday evenings with an additional Monday morning session, a change implemented 18 months ago. It saw County finish the 2017-18 season strongly and then contributed to their title-winning season, but three players can’t attend on Monday morning due to their work commitments and others have another job, including the manager and his staff. Gannon is pushing for a complete move to a professional set-up.
“It’s not just on the playing side, there’s lots of aspects at the club that are a long way away from where they were as a professional outfit,” he said.
“We don’t have a chairman on site, a chief executive or a managing director. I rely on board meetings and it’s very hard to sit down and have those real big strategic meetings.
“I’ve got two or three loans at the moment playing their part and I’ve allowed two or three of our younger development players to go out and play.
Ambition
“In the new year, if there’s no support then what we’ll do is finish the season without growing players. If the club have an ambia tion or a plan to be more competitive, not just for the five months remaining of the season, but for next season then we do need to sit down and look at the strategic plan in terms of moving us towards full-time, increasing the budget so we can compete to retain our own players. Last season we lost three good quality players to full-time clubs.
“What we’re doing in the time we have with the players must be regarded as excellent
because we’re competing with the best in the league. I’m really proud of the professionalism of our group and based on our resources we’re punching above our weight.
“Previous people at the club turned it into a part-time structure and we’ve had to work really hard for three or four years to get somewhere close to get back to full-time football, and that might be the step that’s required to get us back to the Football League.”