The Death & Rebirth of Chester City

Was it really two years ago? I am in the middle of rebuilding this site for a summer relaunch, and some of the new pages that will be available will be covering various running themes that we have gone into over the course of the last five years or so. I thought that...

Revenge, it is said, is a dish best served cold and, while the imprisonment of Stephen Vaughan for fifteen months at the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre yesterday was an incident unrelated to his involvement in football, there may be some people in Chester...

After the insults from almost all quarters and months of hard work, Chester FC, the club borne from the ashes of the Vaughan family's disastrous spell in charge of Chester City, will start the forthcoming season in Division One of the Evo-Stick (formerly the Unibond)...

The email arrived this morning  - a press release issued by City Fans United, the supporters organisation that brought the supporters of the fractured club together, mobilised them, organised them against the cancer that was killing their club and then picked up the...

In less than seven days time, representatives from City Fans United will sit down with members of Cheshire West and Chester Council. The aim of CFU is to secure the lease on The Deva Stadium, a council owned football facility that sits on the western-most outskirts of...

Anyone turning up at The High Court on The Strand in London this morning hoping or expecting to see fireworks was disappointed. There was to be no last minute impassioned speech, in the manner of Gregory Peck in “To Kill A Mockingbird”.

Chester City’s death warrant was signed this morning but, like most wakes, this is as much a time to celebrate rebirth as it is to mourn the passing of the club.

It almost feels as if we should be apologising for the amount of time that has been given over to Chester City on this site over the last few weeks. However, this story has unravelled into one of the most extraordinary football stories of recent times, and it still is not being reported to the extent that it should be elsewhere.

Chester City, according to widespread reports today, are to be sold to the Danish consortium that expressed their interest in buying the club a couple of weeks ago.

Another seven days have passed. There are now less than twenty-four hours until the Football Conference meets to decide the future of Chester City. It’s yet another potentially pivotal moment in the season, but there is little reason to have any confidence that the authorities will put the club out of its misery.

The story of the winding down of Chester City has been gathering pace all day. The club’s expulsion from the Football Conference now seems close to inevitable after it was confirmed that their match against Wrexham this Sunday was cancelled after a prohibition notice was served on the club by Chester Trading Standards office.

Back at home, Chester City stumble from crisis to crisis, but a sale price of £1 is attracting interest in people seem to like those odds. Their interests, however, are likely to be at odds with those of the supporters of the club.

Chester again. The club has been offered to the supporters but they don’t have long to carry out due diligence, considering that the club is due at the high court for a winding up hearing on Wednesday. So, is this more brinkmanship, or is the white flag finally being raised by the club’s owners?

The supporters group Chester Fans United may not have reached a consensus over whether they should formally call a boycott of their club, but it seems to have started already. They beaten 1-0 at home in the Blue Square Premier last night by Salisbury City in front of a record low crowd of just 425.

Chester City continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, and the only realistic action left for the club’s supporters is to boycott the club and form a new one. How much help can they expect from anyone else, though, and can Chester City be evicted from The Deva Stadium.

Chester City’s Stephen Vaughan still hasn’t sold his interest in the club, and his latest appointment at The Deva Stadium does little to instil much confidence that anything is going to improve in the near future. However, at least one potential buyer now seems to be off their radar.

Stephen Vaughan wins again, prolonging the demise of Chester City Football Club a little longer as the authorities roll over and allow themselves to have their bellies tickled again. What this sorry tale is confiriming is the harsh truth that football supporters don’t really have anyone on their side.

Would you believe it, the Football Conference has deferred a definite decision on the future of Chester City Football Club until Thursday now, meaning that the club plays Cambridge City in what may just turn out to be one of the most pointless football matches of all time.

The death of Chester City Football Club won’t come without a fight, and the supporters took the fight to the club and the game’s authorities when they managed to get their match against Eastbourne Borough called off with a pitch invasion during the second half. And who can blame them?

It’s Chester City time again. That lovable rogue Stephen Vaughan Senior has been giving conflicting interviews in the media, but it’s not difficult to read between the lines of what he is saying. Still, if the club doesn’t pay it football creditors by the 30th November, it will all be irrelevant.

There’s an “R” in the month, so the name of Chester City must be being dragged through the mud. The Insolvency Service seem to have finally caught up with Stephen Vaughan, and he will be banned from acting as a company director from the end of this month. Will this change anything at Chester, though?

To the surprise of few, Chester City won another stay of execution at the hands of the Football Conference yesterday. This may give them time to get the Second Round of the FA Cup which, of course, would bring some much needed money into the club. Whether this is good for football, however, remains open to question.

Chester City are standing on the precipice yet again and, frankly, it is worth asking what the game’s authorities were thinking of when they allowed them to start the season because, even if the limp through their latest crisis, they are surely doomed. A new club is the only way forward.

The situation at Chester City, as we have noted on here before, appears to be going from bad to worse. Chester supporters have come together in a bid to try an establish what on earth actually is going on at their club, and an open letter to those running the club is reprinted below.

Blue Square Premier club Chester City are having a testing week, having parted ways with their manager, a fight in the dressing room at half-time during their match on Tuesday night and now the production of a bizarre financial spreadsheet which raises more questions that it answers.

So, Steven Vaughan wins and the game of football dies a little more inside. The FA have decided to back the Football Conference and have given Vaughan's Chester the right to start the new season, in flagrant contravention of rule 2.7 of the Conference's own...

Never let it be said that the FA and Football Conference never help out member clubs. If a story in this morning's Liverpool Daily Post is to be believed, the beleagured Blue Square Premier club Chester City seem set to start this season, albeit with a twenty-five...

There are some football clubs that seem to be in a perpetual state of flux and crisis. One such club is Chester City where, over the last two decades or so, there has been mismanagement on such a grand scale that one wonders how unlucky a club can be to have run into...