Making strides: Jim Gannon has won over the Fir Park faithful

JIM Gannon is a qualified accountant, but even they can find themselves short-changed from time to time. The Motherwell manager has had a spectacularly trouble-free start to his new life in the SPL, but events in his playing and managerial careers haven't always run exactly to plan. Seated deep inside Fir Park, fuelled by a conveyor belt of scalding hot cups of tea, the Irishman is relating the glorious tale of his 14 years in two different spells at Stockport County (10 as a player plus four as a manager) and the decidedly inglorious manner in which he departed on both occasions.

Gannon scored 52 goals in almost 400 appearances across 10 years at Stockport, not bad for a centre-half (or deep-lying libero, as Gannon insists he was), as the side from the Greater Manchester area climbed the divisions during the 1990s. His habit of sneaking unnoticed into goalscoring positions earned him the affection of the fans – who nicknamed him The Ghost – and as the summer of 2000 drew closer he had a lucrative testimonial match lined up and a new two-year contract in the pipeline.

A ruptured cruciate ligament sustained in a Championship encounter with Manchester City soon changed all that, though. Time heals most things but the intervening years have done little to salve the resentment Gannon felt when he learned not only that his contract offer had been removed, but that suddenly the club were insisting on £10,000 out of his testimonial fund to pay for the hire of their Edgeley Park ground for the night.

"Regardless of what the takings were, they charged me £10,000 for using the pitch, so after 10 years' service – coupled with the fact they had also withdrawn the contract – it didn't sit well with me," Gannon said. "So we came to an arrangement for me to leave. It was a bumper crowd and the fans were great on the day, they all turned up and they showed their respect, but I thought from the club at the time it was poor. It didn't reflect well on them at all. I would never have come back as manager if the same people had been in charge."

But back he came, after a productive use of his four-year absence. After a short period at Crewe, Gannon had returned to his spiritual home of Dublin, winning a couple of League of Ireland titles with Shelbourne, scoring against Hibernians (of Malta, not Easter Road) in Europe, and cutting his managerial teeth at his first club Dundalk whilst working as a full time accountant. Stockport, on the other hand, had undone their previous good work, and were back seven points adrift at the bottom of the Football League by the time a group of supporters grabbed control of the club and persuaded Gannon to return as caretaker.

Motherwell fans with the benefit of hindsight might not be surprised about the manner in which he went about transforming the club's fortunes. But plenty of others were. "When I took over at Stockport I said I was going to try to play football and build a young team," he said. "They all said to me 'you will do well to be successful with one of those principles, let alone both'. They thought it was tantamount to footballing suicide but I felt if we managed them properly and coached them well then it could be a success and not just for one season. Fortunately the doubters were proved wrong." A side with an average age of 21 were promoted in the play-off final at Wembley, and before long they were knocking on the door of the Championship.

Despite the revenue generated by the departures of several players, the club found itself mired in administration. Gannon could have jumped ship, too, being offered the manager's job at Brighton and Hove Albion as well as alerting other clubs to his talent, but he opted to stay put. Within weeks, such loyalty meant nothing. "The administrators made us redundant," he said, "for what reason only they know."

Fast forward six months to Fir Park, and those principles remain intact. His new-look Motherwell side lost just once in the first round of SPL games. And it wasn't to Rangers or Celtic. So the future looks bright with Gannon in charge as he is quickly garnering a reputation as one of the best young managers around.