Chris Wilder’s Northampton shrug off debt problems to climb to the top

Life Beyond the Premier League

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Jamie Vardy’s rags-to-riches tale might have made the name of Stocksbridge Park Steels familiar to football fans nationwide but he is not the only export from the small south Yorkshire town enjoying an annus mirabilis.

Chris Wilder, the manager of Northampton Town, was born in Stocksbridge – “a fleeting visit 48 years ago” – and he has scripted his own against-the-odds story this season by lifting a club at risk of liquidation in the autumn to the top of League Two.

Northampton, who extended their club record winning streak to 10 league matches by beating York City on Tuesday, spent the early months of the campaign in a state of crisis owing to a £10m debt to Northampton Borough Council and an unpaid £166,000 tax bill. The Professional Footballers’ Association stepped in to pay the players’ wages but Wilder and the club’s other staff went “six or seven weeks” without being paid. “We weren’t getting bailed out by the PFA and had to go a lot longer,” he explains.

Amid it all, Northampton stayed in the promotion running. “There are two ways you can go, you can feel sorry for yourself and get the white flag up or you can dig in,” says Wilder.

He grew up as an apprentice and young pro at Southampton under Lawrie McMenemy in the 1980s and was marked by the “respect and drive and desire to do well” that he witnessed at The Dell. It seems fair to say his Northampton side have some of those same traits. “The group I have signed are good characters,” he says. “They have got good attitudes.”

While keeping the team on course, Wilder played a role too in the takeover of the club by Kelvin Thomas, who was previously his chairman at Oxford United. “I have worked with him for a number of years and trusted him,” said Wilder, who led Oxford back into the Football League in 2010.

Wilder went so far as to speak out about the delayed takeover in November as David Cardoza, the former owner, vacillated over the sale to Thomas. He told reporters after the 2-1 win at Notts County in November: “How many more years are we going to look at that stand being empty and not earning any money?”

Building work on that unfinished East Stand resumed earlier this week after a 10-month wait. “Having to play at a three-sided ground is never easy, so to see building work start is great for everybody,” says Wilder, who was also allowed to build on Northampton’s excellent first half of the campaign by strengthening his squad with four new signings in January. “There are some competitive clubs in our division, clubs that are financially going for it, [but] we did really good business,” says the Yorkshireman.

His new forward James Collins has scored five goals since his arrival on loan from Shrewsbury Town, while Danny Rose, another recruit, hit the winner against Wycombe Wanderers last weekend.

“When the new chairman came in and the investors, that was the time for us to kick on and take it to the next level, which we have done in a very competitive league,” adds Wilder. And yet Northampton are looking down on them all, with a 12-point lead at the summit. They have broken a 55-year-old club record for successive wins and visit Hartlepool United tomorrow seeking an eighth away league victory in a row. “We have got some good players and with the [difficult] period we’ve been through, there was a massive desire from everybody to do well. We have momentum and the players believe in each other and are determined to be successful.”