Should Stockport reign victorious on Sunday, Challinor would write himself into the club’s history books.<\/p>\n
County have never won the EFL Trophy but have previously come up short on two occasions in successive seasons – in 1992 and 1993.<\/p>\n
“When this competition starts, maybe the first thought isn’t getting to a Wembley final, but the further you progress that thing certainly enters your thinking,” Challinor told BBC Radio Manchester.<\/p>\n
“As much as we’ve been successful over the past few years, the opportunity to go and play at the home of English football on a national stage in terms of what the competition brings is one that we have to look forward to.”<\/p>\n
Challinor is the first manager in Stockport’s history to take them to Wembley on more than one occasion.<\/p>\n
He hopes, however, that their second trip to the national stadium is more prosperous than the last time, when they were beaten by Carlisle United on penalties in the 2023 League Two play-off final.<\/p>\n
“Wembley never gets old or is something you don’t want to experience. I went to the old Wembley as a player and I’ve gone to the new one four times as a manager,” Challinor said.<\/p>\n
“I’ll never lose sight of the fact that I am really lucky to do that. To go back there with this club is great and shows that we’ve been progressing and moving forward.<\/p>\n
“The last one ended in disappointment and we’ll go to right some wrongs, if you like. It’s a brilliant occasion but you have to embrace it.”<\/p>\n
Challinor’s managerial career is at a different point to that of Wilshere, who is still at the beginning of his coaching journey.<\/p>\n
Despite this, the pair know each other having completed their coaching credentials together and Challinor says his counterpart knows what is expected of him.<\/p>\n
“I know Jack, I did my Pro Licence with him. When players come down from the Championship and you don’t have alignment, it takes you a while to get going and that’s probably been the case. But they’ve had good runs throughout the season and they’ve got stacks of quality within their team,” Challinor said.<\/p>\n
“We know it’ll be really tough. We know we’ll be outnumbered in terms of supporters, but our supporters will certainly make themselves heard.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Should Stockport reign victorious on Sunday, Challinor would write himself into the club’s history books. County have never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-599966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}