Big test at Stockport for Addicks

Nathan Jones has no injury worries ahead of tomorrow's crucial clash at Stockport Couity: https://londonnewsonline.co.uk/sport/charlton-athletic-boss-has-no-injury-concerns-over-key-man-as-he-provides-update-ahead-of-stockport-clash/

Stockport is the only ground I have visited with both Charlton (twice) and my non-league team which shows how far the Hatters have fallen and risen.   The CAS Trust preview also focuses on their rise from the National League North: https://www.castrust.org/2025/03/campbell-fit-for-stockport/

Their fans were a boisterous lot at Harbury Lane, one of them getting on to the pitch and pouring a pint of beer over the then Brakes keeper, the Barmy Binman.  

The fourth place Hatters have a strong record at home, having won eleven, lost three and drawn three.

Every Stockport fan of the last 25 years was brought up hearing stories about what happened in the 1997-98 season, when their club finished eighth in what is now the Championship — their highest-ever league position — as neighbours City, then auditioning to be known as English football’s Slapstick XI, fell through the same division’s trapdoor into the old Third Division.

Yet there were also times when Stockport strayed dangerously close to slipping off the radar altogether before Mark Stott, a local businessman, launched the 2020 takeover that changed everything. In the words of club president Steve Bellis, it was the day Stockport “won the lottery”.

A recent feature in the Times  — “Why Stockport, Greater Manchester, is one of the best places to live” — named it among the 12 most desirable towns in England for first-time homebuyers.

“Stockport has engineered a remarkable reinvention from a standard former mill town into a funky, family-friendly alternative to Manchester’s Northern Quarter,” the feature read. “This is where the avocado-brunching millennials move when they have a Lejoux pushchair and are faced with the school run but still want to live a fashionable life.”

In 2005, it was ranked 12th in a book called Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places To Live In The UK, described as a “hellhole” where “entertainment includes being glassed in one of the many pubs” or “avoiding being stabbed on the infamous 192 bus”.

Edgeley Park has also been rejuvenated with a level of care and attention that simply did not exist when Simon Inglis, the author and historian, wrote in his 1987 book The Football Grounds Of Britain that it “seemed on its last legs”.

The challenges are obvious when there are more than 20 professional clubs within a one-hour radius. But there is also plenty of evidence that many football fans want something different to the matchday experience the Premier League offers.