Chester City postpone match against Liverpool

CHESTER CITY have postponed tonight’s scheduled pre-season friendly against Liverpool at the Deva Stadium.

The club’s preparations for the start of next month’s Blue Square League Premier Division campaign have been disrupted following a directive issued by the Football Association.

The FA’s governance department has been in touch with the club to advise that they are not currently an affiliated club, which means Chester have been unable to fulfil their arranged friendlies.

Last weekend’s scheduled friendly match at Marine was cancelled, and now the Blues have been forced to postpone tonight’s match against Liverpool and this Saturday’s friendly at AFC Telford.

Meanwhile, Chester director, Bob Gray, says that everything is being done to remedy the situation in a bid to salvage the club’s remaining pre-season arrangements and put things in order before the start of the league season which is scheduled to kick-off at Grays Athletic on August 8.


He said: “We would like to reassure fans that we’re working hard to rectify the administrative issue with the Football Association and will rearrange our pre-season friendlies as soon as possible.

“I worked late last night to ensure the FA received everything they had requested and the club has solicitors and the administrators working hard to try and resolve the situation.

“Postponing tonight’s scheduled home friendly with Liverpool has hit us in our pockets because that game would have helped provide funds for the club ahead of the start of the season.“If we can save next week’s home friendly match against Burnley we will do, but the most important thing is to ensure everything is sorted out before we start our league season.

“I’ve been in constant contact with the FA and I’m confident we can clear up the situation before our game at Grays next month.


“The transfer of ownership from old company to new company is still in the hands of our solicitors and the administrators, and we are still hopeful of finding a solution acceptable to the FA.

“All the relevant paperwork that was requested has been forwarded to the FA. Technically, we could play friendly matches and I am still hopeful that we will receive our affiliation very soon.”

FA spokesman Mark Hooper said: “When clubs go into administration and transfer to a new owner, there are certain regulations every club has to meet to safeguard the financial integrity of the game.

“These regulations are outlined to the club and, to date, they (Chester City) haven’t met our rules. Some of the information we need has been supplied but not all of it.


It is not us that’s the issue.”The situation has frustrated Blues boss, Mick Wadsworth, who was hoping to watch striker Glynn Hurst, and goalkeeper Andrew Murphy in pre-season action.He said:

“We’ve put a very good team together and our training has been going very well.“We’ve all been enthused about the start of the season, but the fact that we’ve been unable to play any of our pre-season friendlies has cast a cloud on our preparations.

“We’re just sticking with it at the moment and continuing to train in the hope that the situation can be resolved ahead of our first league game of the season.”

Wadsworth confirmed that trialist and centre back Mark Bower had yesterday agreed to join League Two club Darlington.

He said: “Mark had been training with us but he gave me a courtesy call yesterday to say that he had been offered a two-year deal at Darlington.

“I sensed he felt guilty about leaving us but I told him that he had to think about himself and his family and he has n