In June 1997, Stockport County’s left-back, Lee Todd, was looking forward to playing in the Football League’s second tier, his highest level yet. Having joined County as an 18 year-old from his home-town Hartlepool, Lee had made a dozen appearances, mainly on the left wing, as they won promotion to the third tier. But now, in 1996-97, Stockport had won another promotion and had had two decent Cup-runs, even reaching the semi-final of the League Cup. In the course of which, Lee brought his appearances for County to 301, having featured regularly in the League, that season, and in the latter stages of the League Cup, including the shock quarter-final win v Premiership Southampton.

Before he could set foot in the second tier, however, he was leap-frogging it to join Southampton, whose directors had decided that Stockport’s manager, David Jones, was the man they needed to succeed the getaway Souness. Jones, in his turn, decided that Todd was capable of top-flight football.

“He works very hard and he’s got great ability,”

he explained in On the Edge, his “inside story” of Stockport’s 1996-97 season.

“I genuinely believe that he should be playing at a higher level.”

His protégé was more modest about it: when he heard of his manager’s departure, he “predicted the only player he would come back for would be Paul Jones, I was right, but didn’t think he’d want me, too.” Unfortunately for Lee, his assessment would prove to be the more prescient: after six games in the Premier League, he was reduced to playing in the Football Combination for Southampton’s Reserves, when he might have been part of Stockport’s successful second-tier season. He returned for three more games, come February, but Jones had been over-ambitious for Lee, for whom the leap-frog had been too great.

So he moved on to Bradford, where he had two short bursts as they were  promoted from the second-tier in 1999. Lee would never play for them in the Premiership, though: he was soon loaned out to second-tier Walsall, for whom he made but one appearance. He now temporarily found his niche at fourth-tier Rochdale but, after a solid first season, his League career petered out. The question must remain: might Lee have done better to trust his own judgment in 1997, rather than that of Dave Jones, and stuck with Stockport? Maybe so, but Lee “The Lizard” Todd remains a “legend” in Stockport, according to the website of the Fingerpost Flyers – a local Sunday League side that emerged from the ashes of the Stockport County supporters team – whose assistant- manager he became in 2013.