No Stag party for City at Mansfield

The Young Guns of Chester City were crushed 4-0 by Mansfield Town at the Field Mill on Saturday, as the Blues disastrous season took another cruel hit below the belt.


City, who had gone into the game on the back of four successive defeats, fell behind to a Luke Jones goal on 23 minutes, and added his second for the club just ten minutes later to make it 2-0.

The Jones's story continued as young City striker Ben Jones put through his own net on 35 minutes to leave City trailing 3-0 at half time.

The final goal of the game came just ten minutes from time as Jake Speight struck from the edge of the penalty area.

The defeat leaves Chester 27 points off safety, with only 19 games remaining, and the Blues are next in action at home to Grays Athletic, the first game that supporters organisation City Fans United, have announced they will be officially boycotting following a vote amongst its members.

Ironic really, considering Grays were supposed to be Chester's first opponents this season, but the game had to be called off thanks to the club being initially refused a licence to play football by the Football Association.

City get ready for Stags as problems mount

The situation at Chester City got a whole lot worse the other day - amazing to think that it can get worse, based on the previous blogs on here, but on Thursday, the club managed to fall on the wrong side of the Football Conference yet again as they ended up snubbing them at a specially convened meeting to discuss the future of Chester City FC.

The owners of the club pretty much treated the Conference committee with contempt, as they had requested Stephen Vaughan Junior, and Morell Maison to attend the meeting, but only ex-Managing Director, Bob Gray ended up attending the meeting, which left the likes of Conference official Dennis Strudwick reeling.

This will have done the club no favours what so ever, and will more than likely incur the wrath of the Blue Square Premier League committee, possibly at the end of the season, who must be thinking that they cannot wait for that as they can then legitimately throw City out of their competition, as the Football League will no longer have any interest in them whatsoever at that point.

Nick Chadwick is the latest to leave the club, and City are now reaching the point where they only have a small number of players remaining at the football club, and will surely struggle to put a substitute bench together, especially seeing as Chadwick was actually an unused sub in the mid week defeat to Salisbury.

The Blues travel to Mansfield tomorrow in what will surely result in a home victory, but Chester fans expecting to make the trip are likely to voice their continuing displeasure towards the Vaughan family and Morell Maison.

Blues face winding up order from HMRC

Chester City have been hit with a winding up order, served by HM Revenue & Customs, and will be heard in the High Court, on Wednesday 27th January.
This latest news, in the sorry saga of the club, has seen fans of the Blues cling on to hopes that this will be the final curtain for Stephen Vaughan, who claimed recently that he is not the owner of the club, and who's only role is to provide loans to the football club - yet somehow was the man who broke the news to Jimmy Harvey that he was no longer required as manager of the club last Sunday.

Morell Maison, who also claimed that he had nothing to do with Harvey's departure is expected to move from his Director of Football role into the Manager's hotseat, and met the players for the first time this week, 3 weeks after being installed in his DoF position, which beggars belief, considering the players have not been paid for over two months now.

This week, both Anthony Barry & James Owen, left the club with Barry claiming "the situation is getting worse at the club" and also admitted that he couldn't wait to get away, with Owen reportedly heartbroken that he has had to leave his first professional club, all because the club refused to pay any wages to the players since November.

Maison, who advised he was brought to the club to introduce potential buyers which would help see the exit of the Vaughan Family - let's not forget that Stephen Vaughan Junior, is according to his father, the 100% shareholder in the club, yet, Maison admitted that there were two shareholders, both son and father.

Time is running out for the Blues, and the supporters are ramping up the heat now, with City Fans United memnbers currently voting on whether to officially boycott this season's remaining home matches - and it's expected to be a landslide verdict too, if opinions on the fans message board, Deva Chat reflects the majority view of supporters.

Meanwhile, Saturday's game at Crawley became the latest to fall victim to the weather, and will add to the list of re-arranged games, which include Eastbourne, Barrow, Kidderminster, and Rushden.

The Blues are next in action tomorrow when the face Salisbury at the Deva Stadium, in what is expected to see the lowest attendance at home for many years.

Harvey exits the Deva as Maison takes charge

Never mind the snow that's currently covering the Deva Stadium, the storm clouds that have been gathering around the place in the last 7 days have been so heavy, they've actually seen an explosion of controversy surrounding new Director of Football, Morell Maison, who surfaced at the Kidderminster away game on Boxing Day.

Last Monday evening, Maison stated that Jim Harvey was Manager of Chester City for as long as he wanted the job, and that he himself had no desire to interfere with team affairs.

Following this statement, a meeting was arranged and held between representatives of City fans United, and Morell Maison, and to CFU's surprise, Gary Metcalfe, who claimed he was there to try and broker a deal that would see Stephen Vaughan leave the club - funny that, surely Maison was there to do that?

Then just two days after those CFU committee members advised Maison & Metcalfe that Jim Harvey was the one shining light at the club, and to even think of replacing him would surely antagonise the fans to such an extent that they would surely withdraw their support of the club they so passionately follow, at a rapid rate, the fans heard the news that Jimmy Harvey had left the club by mutual consent.

Mutual consent always sounds like both parties agreed that that was best, however, Harvey was clearly qouted in the Chester Leader saying he was "bitterly disappointed" and that he had "received a call from Stephen Vaughan to tell him Morell Maison was bringing in his own management team", and that Harvey was not part of those plans.

Firstly, that is a disgrace, and secondly, what was Stephen Vaughan doing telling Harvey, as Vaughan should be having nothing to do with the club right now, so why is he still calling the shots?

Everyone is up in arms over this, and feelings are that a boycott of home games could very well be on the way, going by what the general feeling of the membership is.

This is likely to be strengthened if Maison continues the cull at the Deva, following the news yesterday that Anthony Barry has left the club, with others including Nick Chadwick, expected to follow suit, which could prompt Maison into bringing in a ruck full of "second chance" players from his soccer academy in Milton Keynes, meaning no local community engagement at the club.

That will be simply devastating.

The blog calls for the footballing authorities to block exactly what is going on, and force the ownership of the club into local hands, for the good of the club, as this simply cannot be sustained as the club hurtles on a steep downwards slope.

The Non League Show

For the readers of this blog, you will know of my passion for all things Chester City.

Well recently you may or may have known that our club is in danger of being squeezed out of existence, thanks to unscrupulous owners, the latest being the Vaughan family, who have signle-handedly brought the club to it's knees.

Now though they have brought in a potential new owner, who has pretty much been as bad for another club, halesowen Town, as the Vaughan's have for Chester.

In October, we launched City Fans United, a group that now has nearly 500 members, which is pretty good considering that we have about 1000 fans right now, having seen many fall by the wayside thanks to a reluctance to go to games at the Deva Stadium whilst the Vaughan's are still there.

Tonight, CFU is represented by myself on the Non League Show, accessible via this link, as we put our point across regarding the demise of our club. The show starts at 9pm, and they are expecting to talk about Chester at around 9.15pm.

There is a podcast too, that you can download, should you be reading this blog after I've been on BBC radio London, just check out the BBC page for that.

Link to Non League Show

Don't delay, join CFU today!

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