In the final article in our series looking at our players who had extended loan periods at other clubs, Dan Levy, reports on Conrad Logan’s spell at Stockport County.
“I’ve been asked to pen a few words on Conrad Logan, who was on loan at Stockport County through most of the season just gone. I am on the board of Stockport County Supporters Trust, and was a club board member for the two seasons prior to this. But of course my comments on Conrad are entirely my own, and not those of either the club or the Trust.
And of course I am going to take the opportunity to compare the running of a trust owned club which has shown patience in its management team and just been promoted, with a club owned by a single person, which has got through a number of managers and has been relegated. Bit of an open goal, and one that it is just too tempting not to kick the ball through.
Conrad Logan has been an important part of County’s set up this year. The previous season, County went on a 9 match run of winning without conceding a goal, which was a new record in English professional football. We did this playing with a loanee from Wolves, Wayne Hennessey, who has subsequently gone on to be Wolves – and Wales – number one. Which was great, but didn’t solve our issue of not having a good keeper of our own.
We acquired another keeper last summer, who had been playing at Sheffield Wednesday and whom the club thought would be fantastic. It soon became clear that he wasn’t up to the standard we required.
Enter Conrad Logan. To be honest he doesn’t look like he ought to be a professional footballer. He is pretty tall, but nearly as wide. He looks like he might leave craters when he lands after reaching for the ball. He takes up two seats on the team coach. Etc Etc. But he is in fact very agile, a great shot stopper, pretty quick off his line and really a very good keeper indeed…….
Although we had a fairly mediocre start to the season, for instance losing 4-2 at hopeless Mansfield, it is hard to think of a goal we conceded which was Logan’s fault. Conrad was a regular in the side except when he was forbidden permission by Leicester City to play in the FA Cup. County didn’t do itself any favours in this competition (we drew at home to Staines and lost away on penalties) and it was never in doubt that Conrad would get back in the team.
After Christmas, County started to be brilliant. We hardly lost. We went from the lower middle of the table to challenging for the top half, to challenging to the playoffs to thinking we might just get the last automatic place.
However, on 16 February Conrad managed to get himself sent off at Edgeley Park just before half time when we were winning 1-0. He was rolling the ball out from his line, and was surprised by a Bury striker hiding behind him who stole the ball. Despite 5000 fans and 10 players shouting “he’s behind you”. A comedy moment, or at least the Bury fans seemed to think so. Conrad chased after him, and fouled the player just outside the area. Red Card. No keeper on the bench. We lost 2-1. He will look behind him at all times from now on.
As Logan was suspended, we needed a new keeper on loan and managed to get John Ruddy from Everton. Ruddy had been on loan with us before, and he is very good indeed. So Logan ended up staying on the bench as understudy to our new loanee, and as we picked up where we had left off.
However, in the playoffs, Ruddy made a bit of a howler in the first leg at Wycombe, and picked up an injury. Logan came on for the second leg, kept a clean sheet, and couldn’t really be dropped after that, and so appeared for us at Wembley, where we won, which was very nice.
Logan in action for LCFC (picture courtesy of Raymonds/lcfc.com)
He is certainly good enough for Divisions 1 or 2. That probably is his level. Which of course is Leicester City’s now too.
Which leads on to my wider observations. It would have been easy to have lost patience with Jim Gannon when County were losing in the first half of the season. Probably if County was run by a single owner-chairman with a typical owner-chairman’s lack of patience, we would have changed manager, and we probably wouldn’t have had the success of the second half of the season. We don’t have a single dominant chairman, because the fans own the club. Decisions take longer, are thought about for longer, and are less impulsive.
Leicester City had a different experience. Changing managers doesn’t always work. Patience and fortitude are sometimes better responses to adversity.
We don’t have a rich owner who can bankroll the club. We have to run the club on a break-even basis. We don’t expect to buy our way out of trouble. We are sustainable on crowds of 4000, in a town where there is a lot of competition from other clubs – there are 6 premiership teams within an hour’s drive. It isn’t easy, but for lower division teams sustainability is the most important thing. For us winning on the pitch is great, but being properly run off it gives us every bit as much pride.
See you at Edgeley Park in the new season!”