Chester City

Last Season At A Glance

They started off like a house on fire, and there was even whisperings of promotion amongst some of their more optimistic supporters as they lurked in the unfamiliar upper reaches of the division early on, with the appointment of Bobby Williamson looking to be a masterstroke.

But for whatever reason they soon reverted to type and went on the sort of run that York and Shrewsbury endured in seasons gone past, and relegation could well have been on the cards.

From 2nd after 14 games to finishing just above the relegation zone is the sort of thing to give nightmares, and they were comfortably the worst side in the division from Christmas onwards with just two victories since December 22nd.

The Gaffer

If Simon Davies turns out to be half as good a manager as he was a player, then you may as well wave goodbye to Chester City right away.

For as we found to our cost, Davies was so typical of those players who start off at a high level, being mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Giggs and Beckham before being dropped down the leagues with such speed that the only time they get mentioned in the same breath is when the News Of The World come up with one of those "Man Utd Class of 93 - whatever happened to......" features.

Davies was given the job at Chester after a fairly successful time as youth team manager at the Deva Stadium, before being given the job on a permanent basis after a spell as caretaker. One suspects that with all the issues surrounding the running of the English border club that he got the job because nobody else wanted it.

His time in charge has just one win from thirteen games in charge. So much for the new manager honeymoon period. Fair enough, the rot had set in by the time he was given the keys to the manager's office, but there's been precious little to suggest he is capable of turning things around.

Reasons For A Better Season

We're gonna struggle to come up with something for this.

Manager Simon Davies has took a gamble on his Summer signings. He's brought in striker Paul Taylor from Vauxhall Motors.

Taylor has scored a bagful of goals at non league level, and was rumoured to have been tracked by ourselves at one point. He may turn out to be just another Leighton McGivern, but if he can get half the number of goals he did for VM, then he'll do alright.

He'll be partnered by the return of Ryan Lowe. Lowe has been around the lower divisions for a few seasons, and has made his return to the club that he left back in 2006 after spells at Crewe and Stockport.

Reasons For A Worse Season

Looking back on last season, Chester could have gone down very easily. Had there now been two worse clubs (which I know how obvious that sounds), then they'd have been down. A points tally of 50 is often talked about as being the benchmark for safety.

Chester managed 47. And that was with one hell of a head start. At Christmas, they'd had 35 of those points in the bag.

And if you were looking at which Chester City are likely to show up for 2008-9, which Chester City would you expect to be the one on display?

The one from the first half of the season or the second half.? Just what exactly has changed over the Summer to suggest anything different? New manager? New investment? Host of decent signings? New togetherness at the football club? Nope, just the same old Chester City.

The players weren't good enough last season. The manager was incapable of turning it round. Half the squad (or at least the half brave enough to be) seemed at war with the club's owners.

And the supporters are departing in droves, sick to the back teeth of a club that seems to have transported itself back to the days of Terry Smith's ownership.If ever you wanted an example of a club in freefall, then Chester City is it.

Season Depends On

RochdaleAFC.com Prediction

Reasons For Our Prediction

There's something not right with Chester City as far as football clubs go. They are not a club which has the best interests of the supporters at heart.

You could argue that there's a whole host of clubs that you could claim that about but with Chester, it just seems to be even further down the line to the extent that I don't believe there'll be a Chester City FC in five years time.  

The problems stem from club owner Stephen Vaughan. He stepped down as Chairman last season, and was linked with selling the club on a couple of occasions, but the Deviants will go in to 2008-9 with Vaughan still at the helm.

Everywhere you look with Chester, things seem a mess. The fans and the owner are at loggerheads with seemingly no middle ground at all. Attendances have been falling to the sort of level where they'll be getting sneered at by Macc fans.

The club itself is in freefall with their second half of the 2007-8 season being the worst of any club in England. There were teams with points deductions who enjoyed a better second half of the season than Chester did, with as mentioned above just two wins from their final twenty six games of the season.

They've appointed a manager who if you were looking for the nicest thing to say about him is "lacking experience" and has never shown any sort of heart for the game.

Even the likes of Mourihno, Wenger or Hill would struggle to get any sort of success at Chester, so I can't see Davies breaking this run of incompetence.Especially not with a dressing room which is hardly what you'd call fully backing the club.

There's Kevin Ellison who seemed destined to leave Chester last season, but remained behind with one rumoured reason being the amount of money it would cost him to leave Chester.

He turned down moves to Stockport and Wrexham last term, and the cited reasons of a "love of Chester" raised many an eyebrow.Then you've got the Butler and Dinning situation.

Both players were suspended last season by Chester, until Chester were told that they couldn't "suspend" them. The PFA announced a transfer embargo on Chester this Summer because the majority of players (which it appeared was just Butler and Dinning) weren't being paid. And next thing you know, Butler and Dinning sign new twelve month contracts at Chester.

You couldn't make this club up.

Even the programme editor can't take it anymore and has gone running to the press with tales of woe from the Deva (click here for details). What a happy club.

We've seen nothing emanating from the Deva Stadium to suggest that this season will be anything different from the second half of last season. They are a club in decline and could possibly be the closest we've seen to a 21st century Doncaster Rovers if you can remember how they were in the 1990's.

I bet the Chester fans would even take that American owner back right now.Make no mistake, had it not been for Luton Town's points deduction, we'd have had Chester to finish bottom. We're not overly confident that we've done the right thing in doing so anyway. But either way, they'll be playing Conference football in 2009-10.