A FORMER Chester City player is refusing to concede defeat in his bid to buy the crisis-hit club – despite being put off by the £1m price tag put on the Blues.
Football coach and entrepreneur David Jones was quoted the seven-figure fee after the Deva Stadium outfit were placed into voluntary administration by major shareholder Stephen Vaughan on Sunday.
Jones, who played for Chester’s reserves in the 1988-89 season and returned to coach the youth team in the mid-1990s, will not pay that.
But the 41-year-old from Ellesmere Port intends to go back to the administrators, Refresh Recovery Ltd, once he has held talks with David Pickering, chairman of Chester’s City Centre Management, and the Chester City Supporters Trust.
“In my opinion, the administrators are not going to get what they’re asking for,” said Germany-based Jones, who had a playing career that took in spells in Hong Kong and Spain before establishing a successful soccer school in America.
“But I’m speaking to David Pickering and the Trust and needless to say we are hopeful of being able to do something that will at least make the administrators look at what we can put forward.
“Without doing due diligence, which I’ve asked for, it’s impossible to put a figure on the club, especially one that has been relegated out of the Football League and has no tangible assets.”
Jones, whose interest in buying the Blues was first sparked when Vaughan put the club up for sale in November, added: “Chester City has to become a community-led club, with a united supporters’ group and with business-minded people who can run the club within its means but also make it successful on and off the field.”
Jones, who works as an academy coach with Bundesliga Two side SV Wehen Wiesbaden, is not the only party interested in buying the Blues.
An unnamed Cheshire-based entrepreneur – believed not to be controversial former York City owner John Batchelor – said he will be contacting the administrators. Music promoter Gareth Evans, who managed Manchester rock group The Stone Roses, told The Chronicle he would be interested if the council allowed him to develop the Deva so that it could stage concerts. Evans was hired as managing director by Terry Smith during the American’s disastrous ownership of the Blues.
Another scenario is that Vaughan could buy back the club from the administrators.
Bill Brandon, of Refresh Recovery Ltd, confirmed to The Chronicle they were looking for £1m and a sale before Chester are inducted into the Conference at its AGM on June 13.
The Blues are likely to start the 2009-10 campaign on minus 10 points.
The Chester City Independent Supporters Association want Blues fans to attend a meeting at the Deva Showbar in Station Road, Chester on Thursday, May 28 at 7.45pm.
