Pundit drops bold Stockport County, Birmingham City prediction | OneFootball

The Hatters have made a strong start to life in League One.

EFL pundit Ali Maxwell has predicted that Stockport County will finish second in League One and win automatic promotion to the Championship in their first season back in the English third tier.

Pretty much ever since their return to the football league, Stockport have been on an upwards trajectory.

Their play-off final loss to Carlisle United could have been a real hammer blow for them; they turned it into motivation.

That pain was used to fuel the title-winning season of last time out, and they have continued their stellar play into the new campaign.

County sit on 16 points after nine games and currently hold the final play-off spot in League One. Fellow newly promoted sides Wrexham Mansfield are both on 20 points and are currently sitting in second and third in the league, respectively.

Nine games gives us a pretty fair sample size of what these teams are like. We can start to project what and where they will be at the end of the season in a more accurate manner. The strong play displayed by Dave Challinor's Hatters have set some expectations very high.

Ali Maxwell's Stockport County promotion prediction

Maxwell, who co-hosts the Not The Top 20 Podcast, believes that County will finish second in League One this season, with only high-flying Birmingham City ahead of them.

He said on the Monday 14th October episode of the podcast: "I'm pretty all in on Birmingham. Outside of that, at the top anyway, I think my strongest stance is that Stockport look very strong, and in quite a sustainable way, so I think my bet for second place right now would probably be Stockport.

"They're my favourite team to watch," added Maxwell's co-host, George Elek.

"I think there are so many teams these days who are great to watch almost in extended highlights packages where they see a lot of the ball, a lot of the time they're retaining the ball fairly deep, and what you want to see is the moves that yield chance creation effectively.

"Whereas with Stockport you've got a side who are pretty relentlessly mobile in a forward direction, and they are a consistent goal threat. Even in games where they don't come away with three points, if you look at their games this season, their underlying numbers are phenomenal. Like phenomenal.

"Dave Challinor has created something that's relatively rare in this day and age: a winning football side who are easy on the eye without being necessarily overly possession heavy, and there's a place for that. I think it's a very good way for a club in League One to pitch themselves."

Double promotion for Stockport would be an astounding achievement

Back-to-back promotions are hard to come by; that's why Ipswich Town's one last season was celebrated so much. The circumstances are different between today's Stockport and that Ipswich team, but there are similarities too.

They both battled/are battling some much wealthier and more established teams than them for the top spots, who were two divisions above them in the prior campaign.