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DAVID CHALLINOR was a Stockport player when the rot was setting in but now aims to take the club back to the CHAMPIONSHIP.

County were last in English football’s second tier 20 years ago but incredibly 10 seasons later lost their League status and dropped as low as National League North.

David Challinor is back at Stockport in happier times as manager

David Challinor played for Stockport during their rapid decline

Challinor played for Stockport during their decline and left in 2004, a year before they crashed into League Two.

But the club are back in the EFL and on the up. They sit respectfully mid-table as they consolidate in their first season in League Two.

Challinor — who got both Stockport and Hartlepool promoted from the National League in the last two seasons — wants to fulfil owner Mark Stott’s ambition of taking the club back up the leagues.

And you would not bet against it as Challinor, who also managed Colwyn Bay and Fylde, has won SIX promotions in ELEVEN years.

He told SunSport: “Look at Luton, who were stuck in the National League for five years, are now in the Championship and just missed out on getting into the Premier League last season!

“It shows how fortunes can change when you get things right. 

“I played here when things weren’t going well. They were selling things off rather than bringing things in. 

“But this owner has ambition. He has done everything the other way round to what happened then. He has put an infrastructure in place that is on a par with the Championship.

Stockport owner Mark Stott has invested more than £8million into the club

Our man Justin Allen meets Stockport boss David Challinor

“We know it’s going to be tough going through the divisions but he’s willing to back how we want to go about it — allowing our recruitment to be great and giving us the structure.

“From a management perspective I can’t ask for any more. I need to deliver for them.”

Since taking over Stott has invested more than £8MILLION into the club and none of that capital is loaned. Every penny is gifted to Stockport with no debts run up.

He also secured a three-year lease at Carrington training ground — which is Championship standard and currently owned by Sale FC Rugby Club — as well as refurbishing the facilities. 

This will tide the club over while Stott works on taking the club to their own training facilities inside the borough of Stockport. 

The local businessman has also upgraded Edgeley Park.

They opened on Boxing Day a “fan zone” called the County Courtyard. And fans were loving it as they were served “Christmas Dinner In A Cup”. For just £4.50, they enjoyed dripping in gravy, a cup that included roast turkey, pigs in blanket, mash potato, gravy, stuffing and Brussel Sprouts. The picture went viral on social media — clocking 75MILLION views.

Christmas Dinner in a Cup has been going down a storm at Stockport

Stott is also currently planning on developing the Railway End — where away supporters get situated. The current 1,200-seater open end of the ground will be converted to a 4,100-seater undercover stand.

This is all a far cry from when Challinor cut his managerial teeth at Welsh club Colwyn Bay.

He said: “I’ve gone from having nothing and doing everything to now having it all laid on for me. 

“At Colwyn Bay we used to be struggling for training ground, equipment, all those sort of things.

David Challinor is loving the challenge with Stockport County

“And it was a struggle to find suitable places to train because the facilities were nowhere near as good as they are now. Even 3G pitches were hard to find. We sometimes trained on a pitch, which was effectively a bit of green carpet on a car park!”

Having won promotion from the eighth tier as a player at Colwyn, he promptly took the club into the sixth tier — National League North — as a manager.

He then left to drop back down to the eighth rung again with AFC Flyde, where he won three promotions in five years, taking them into the National League.

And he came agonisingly close to taking the club into the EFL, reaching the play-offs in 2018 and losing the 2019 final to Salford.

He sighed: “It’s the only regret I have there. To have got that club into League Two would’ve been a ridiculous achievement.”

Phil Bardsley has recently signed for Stockport County

Challinor switched to Hartlepool where he took the club into the EFL in 2021 after they beat Torquay in the final.

He said: “Everyone assumed with Hartlepool being a bigger club that I had a miles better budget but in fact it was exactly the same as Fylde. 

“They were a club that had come all the way down from League One but still had the same infrastructure from that level. They were haemorrhaging money.

“So we made a lot of redundancies and it was a skeleton staff in terms of on and off the pitch — and in our second season we had a strong run to make the play offs and beat Torquay in the final. Getting back into the EFL was huge.”

Challinor only stayed at Victoria Park for three months in League Two before quitting to drop back to the National League with Stockport. He had just signed a new three-year deal.

The Hatters boss said: “When I took over my kids were in the last year of GCSEs and A Levels, we weren’t in a position to relocate there. The family stayed down this way. I did my job up there and came back at the weekend.

“When we got promoted at Hartlepool we spoke about a new contract. I then looked at relocating. My eldest has gone up to Durham to do engineering at university and we could’ve moved. 

“I was willing to sign a three-year deal but the chairman wanted a get-out clause so if things didn’t go so well he could sack me.

“We signed that deal, which meant I’d get a pay-off if I was sacked but nowhere near the amount you’d expect, but on the flip side the contract had a release clause for me.

“Two months in, my agent told me Stockport were interested. It was tough because the relationship I had with Hartlepool fans was special. It had never been like that at any previous club.

“The chance to be closer to home was a big one for me and at Stockport there was no glass ceiling. I have no ill feelings with Hartlepool and understand why they couldn’t commit to me long-term. That happens in football but I’m now just so glad to be back in the EFL and hoping to push Stockport up the leagues.”