As focus begins to turn towards next season, we take one last look back at the 2022/23 campaign and all the stats from our first year back in the Football League.
We’ve been crunching the numbers, and this is what we’ve found:
League finish – 4th:
Returning to the Football League for the first time in 11 years, County racked up 79 points over our 46 League Two fixtures – the highest points tally for a side newly promoted from the National League since Bristol Rovers picked up 85 in 2015/16.
It is our second highest points return in a Football League campaign this century, bettered only by the 82 we picked up in 2007/08 when we again finished 4th in League Two – that time going on to secure promotion at Wembley under Jim Gannon.
It marks the sixth successive season that the club have recorded a top-seven finish, across three different divisions from the National League North to League Two, and is the ninth straight season that the club have finished in a higher position than the previous year.
Despite losing six of our opening ten games in a tough reintroduction to the EFL, we would go on to lose only five of the subsequent 36 in the league to surge back up the table, and take the race for automatic promotion down to the final day. Those 11 defeats are the fewest we have recorded in a Football League campaign since the 1996/97 promotion-winning season in League One (10).
We also finished the season with the best goal difference in League Two at +28, one better than eventual league champions Leyton Orient at +27.
An alarming five red cards from our opening 13 league games raised questions about discipline early on, but County would go on to finish 3rd in the League Two fair play table, behind only Doncaster Rovers and Harrogate Town, with no further red cards picked up since our defeat against Grimsby in October. Our total of 52 yellow cards last season was comfortably the fewest in the division.
Attacking:
By recent standards, 2022/23 proved to be a relatively low-scoring season in League Two with 1,294 goals scored in total – at an average of around 54 goals per team. This was lower than both League One (1,414) and the Championship (1,342).
County ended the campaign with 65 goals in League Two (not including play-offs) – more than each of the three sides who ended up earning automatic promotion. It was the fourth highest tally in the division, behind only Carlisle United (66), Salford City (72) and Mansfield Town (72).
Despite injury cutting his season short, Player of the Year Kyle Wootton finished the campaign as our top scorer with 14 in League Two – the most by a County player in an EFL season since Liam Dickinson scored 21 in 2007/08.
Of the 68 goals we scored in League Two and our play-off campaign, 24 of them were headers – the highest number of headed goals across the top four divisions in English football. Eight of those were scored by Wootton, a record bettered only by League Two’s top goalscorer, Andy Cook (11).
Our 5-0 win away at Hartlepool United in December was our biggest win in the Football League since a 6-0 win over Wycombe Wanderers in December 2007, and our biggest away from home in the EFL since beating Darlington 5-0 on the final day of the 06/07 campaign.
Defending:
It was our defensive record that really stood out in League Two last season, despite a shaky start that saw us record only three clean sheets in our opening 11 league games.
Our total of just 37 goals conceded was the second best defensive record in League Two last season behind champions Leyton Orient, and was a new post-war club record in a Football League season. You’d have to go back over 100 years for the last time we conceded fewer goals in an EFL campaign – 1921/22 to be more specific, when we let in just 21 goals in a 38-game season.
We recorded 22 clean sheets over our 46 league outings, again the most by the club in the Football League since 1921/22, with club legend Ben Hinchliffe in goal for 18 of them. That’s the most individual clean sheets kept by a County goalkeeper in the EFL since Paul Jones, in 1996/97 (also 18).
Player milestones:
33 different players represented County in League Two last season – ranging from Ashton Mee at just 16-years-old, to Phil Bardsley at the age of 38.
For the second consecutive season, midfielder Ryan Croasdale was County’s most-used player in League Two, playing in 47 of our 49 outings including play-offs, starting 39 of them. He made 55 appearances in all competitions during 2022/23, the joint-most alongside Myles Hippolyte. It’s the second year running that Ryan has hit the 50-game mark.
Those numbers dwarf in comparison to Kyle Knoyle though, who actually went on to play an incredible 51 times in League Two last season – 25 games for Doncaster Rovers, and 26 for County after joining us in January. The defender played a total of 4,489 minutes in the league last season, more than any other player in the division.
Going back to Ryan Croasdale, the midfielder was one of three players to pass the 100-game mark for the club last season, alongside Will Collar and captain, Paddy Madden. All three were amongst the first players to be presented with their landmark caps, a new initiative brought in by the Stockport County Players Association.
The biggest milestones reached last season, however, belong to goalkeeper Ben Hinchliffe. Our legendary number one became the first player since Sean Connelly in 1999 to reach 300 appearances for the club when playing against Grimsby on New Year’s Day, and just a month later Ben broke the all-time appearance record for a County goalkeeper. His 307th game for the club saw him overtake Tiger Bowles’ record, reaffirming his status as one of our greatest ever ‘keepers.
Ben now stands at 11th in the all-time County appearance list at 327, and is now only 12 games away from overtaking Bill McCulloch to break into the top ten. An ever-present season in League Two would see him climb as high as 6th in those rankings.
Attendances:
We couldn’t finish without talking about your incredible, record-breaking support throughout the 2022/23 season. Our average home attendance of 9,108 was the highest recorded at Edgeley Park since the Division Four title-winning season of 1966/67 (9,820), with a combined attendance of over 250,000 at Edgeley Park across the season.
Our gate of 10,319 recorded in our home game against Rochdale in April was a new record for an all-seater Edgeley Park, and was the highest since over 11,000 watched us draw with Manchester City in March 2000. Incredibly, it was one of eight 10,000+ crowds recorded over the course of the season, beating the total amount of 10,000+ crowds we recorded across five years in the Championship from 1997-2002.
Only Bradford City recorded higher attendances in League Two last season, whilst we also recorded the second highest average away attendance in the division too.
Overall, those crowds were over 40% higher than in 1996/97, the club’s most successful ever season, and 60% higher than our Wembley-winning season in 2007/08.
