D Day Looms (again) for Chester

Tomorrow is the latest of D-Days for Chester City Football Club.

Having not blogged on here for a couple of weeks, it's time to update on what has become a stressful soap opera, that is more dramatic and more twists and turns than any other soap on British television.

The 7 day stay of execution was extended last Thursday by the Football Conference, but on Friday morning the Conference board recommended that Chester City be expelled from the Blue Square Premier League, based on the 5 breaches of rules that the club pleaded guilty to.

That recommendation was made to the remaining Conference clubs, as well as the clubs that make up both the North & South sections one step below the BSP.

Those clubs are set to vote tomorrow, with the likely outcome being that they will vote against expulsion, as many of the clubs have points to lose, and fear missing out on promotion, or even staying up in the Conference.

Those clubs are failing to see the bigger picture here, which has resulted in a once proud club, being dragged to its knees, and on the brink of oblivion.

In the middle of all this, has been a crazy bid for the club made by a group of Danish people, who actually believe that Stephen Vaughan will be clearing £217,000 worth of debt by tomorrow ahead of the all important meeting.

The Danes, represented by egomaniac Palle Rasmussen, originally declared his interest in the club a couple of weeks ago, but had only started an internet campaign to buy the club - this involved raising revenue from Danish people, who had to spend £11 to join the group, before any view of the books could take place.

Palle met up with members of the CFU committee last Saturday, and those members were left dumbfounded at the lack of knowledge of the debts outstanding that the Danes failed to comprehend, simply believing their own words that £750,000 could actually be raised quite easily.

Rasmussen had advised CFU that he would not proceed with his bid if the CFU did not back it, but then he met up with Stephen Vaughan at the Deva Stadium, however, why his son Stephen Vaughan Junior was not present was an absolute mystery, and the fact that there was no director of the football club actually present at the meeting summed up the entire charade that was being played out here.

Following that meeting, Rasmussen then descended into the CFU race night, which was an absolute success raising £800 for both the CFU & Junior Blues, but the Dane tried to gate crash the meeting with TV cameras, but was swiftly stopped in his tracks due to a lack of permission to film inside the Home Guard club, and the CFU members were certainly on guard for the remainder of the evening.

News then broke on Sunday morning that the Danes had agreed a deal to buy the football club - according to the club at least, whereas nothing official was coming out from Rasmussen or his associates.

The laughable part in all of this was that the Danish consortium are not actually a legal constituted organisation as yet and cannot legall buy another company, yet Rasmussen did not seem to realise this!

Just two nights earlier, a hueg meeting took place at the Guild hall in Chester, where 400 people crammed in to the venue to witness CFU's plans for the future, and heard real experiences from the likes of AFC Telford, FC United of Manchester, and AFC Wimbledon, the latter being represented by Kevin Rye, of Supporters Direct - a group that have provided much assistance to the CFU since its inception.

The meeting showed that the public are behind the idea of the phoenix club, and there was certainly a media frenzy that night too, as I conducted 12 interviews with the members of the press, which included live reports on Granada Tonight, BBC1 North west Tonight, and Sky Sports News.

Sky Sports were also in attendance to film the meeting for Jeff Stelling's Soccer Saturday show, which will be screened this weekend on Sky Sports 1 / Sky Sports News at 12 midday-3pm, so set your Sky Plus for more footage of CFU.

Anyway, back to the current, and I've had to respond to the Stephen Vaughan interview on Sky Sports News on Monday, where he branded CFU "a bunch of idiots" but then told them to get behind the club - not the best of ways to try to encourage supporters to return, in fact all it did was push people the opposite direction.

So, I got in touch with Sky Sports, to request that we be allowed a right of reply, and so it was, on Tuesday, that I tried to redress the balance - here's the link

Sky Sports Interview

It's been a busy last couple of days too, as I've done interviews for Dee 106.3, Radio Merseyside, and also the Chester Chronicle, and Chester Leader, with Soccer Saturday set to do further interviews tomorrow.

So, tomorrow, the clubs will decide Chester's fate, or maybe not, but one thing is for sure whatever the decision tomorrow, there will be no celebrating from anyone on the CFU committee, it will either be a decision that had to be made, or a farcical decision that will allow the Vaughan Circus to continue, whilst it remains unable to fulfil its fixtures.


Thats it for now then, a bit like war & peace, but so so much has happened!