•Editorial
•Fan Profile – Steven Spencer
•The Premiership, Another Planet
•A View from The West Stand
•Fans Forum – #2
•Book Review – 'Soccer Czars'

A VIEW FROM THE WEST STAND

Here are some more edited highlights of the Fans Forum convened by Radio Merseyside and held at the Deva Stadium on St Patrick’s Day 1997.

The panel included Chester Chairman Mark Guterman, Chester boss Kevin Ratcliffe, Chief Executive Bill Wingrove and former City boss, now on the scouting staff at Blackpool, Harry McNally. Neil Turner invited questions from a packed audience.

It was arranged by Radio Merseyside and compered by Neil Turner (NT). Other members of the panel:

BW Yes, I’ve noted that they get some quite big gates at the basketball but I’ve made no approach to them neither have they made one to us.

DAVID EVANS A point I was going to make about the Chester Jets is that when you go to watch them they have got a commercial manager who is absolutely buzzing with excitement about the game. It doesn’t matter that last season they were bottom of the league, this season doing rather well – he just seems to be able to fill the place. A lot of people in Chester seem to say, “Ohhh, Chester Jets, they are doing really well at the moment. You talk to taxi drivers, bus drivers .... and yet I get asked more in Chester “Whose top’s that mate?” than any where else in the country. We’ve got a city here of 150,000 people, that’s bigger than Bolton, Norwich, bigger than a lot of places who have clubs who are doing far better than this. Something this club suffers from a lot is a local identity problem. The club is not promoted in the city and it’s something we’ve got to work on. (Applause)

MG I don’t know that it’s the ONLY club. But the reason we haven’t got one is because it’s the Council’s responsibility. We’ve been negotiating with them for two and a half years. It’s a massive cost we’re told to actually erect the signs because it’s a public amenity and they’re the only ones who can put it up.

BW We have a full time Football in the Community Officer here. Each year he entertains four and a half thousand different children. In the last twelve months he’s been into twenty-nine of the fifty schools in Chester ... He shares his work with a football player. On top of that he visits special schools and Old Peoples’ homes.

Q Why can’t the professional players sort out a rota so that they visit schools?

KR We have actually discussed this about six months ago. My idea was to send three or four players along to a school to give out tickets for Saturday, put on a coaching session and try to generate support through the young kids .... We are in the process of doing it.

BW We already do a Junior Blues scheme where children can attend a game for a £1, or £2 on this side of the ground. We do a number of theme days and a half-price season ticket. I think the Leyton Orient idea’s a good one and we’ll look at the idea.

JOHN One problem we’ve got is that we’ve not got enough local based players.

BW Four and a half thousand children contacted is a massive achievement.

BW We have taken the view that it’s under-14. But we’ve taken a bit of clogging on this – I take your point maybe we should look at under-16s next season.

ED JONES Every week Tranmere put a big advert in the Chronicle which stands out better than articles on Chester. I think we’re losing support that way.

BW Quite simply Tranmere pay for that advert. Three to Five hundred pounds, I don’t know. We can’t stop Tranmere advertising in that paper. May be they need to, their plight may be a great deal worse than ours.

MAN AT THE BACK How can Wigan afford £150,000 to buy a player when they’re on less gates than us?

MG What’s happening at Wigan is what happened at Blackburn five years ago. The Blackburn example in my view is what’s ruined modern football. Jack Walker went out and spent millions on players. They’re making a loss every year and have wages they can’t actually sustain. If a club like Liverpool or Newcastle or Man United do it, at least they’re earning the money. It’s not someone putting it in and putting it in, because effectively you can’t go on like that for ever however wealthy you are. Wigan have distorted the marketplace .... I’m not convinced it always works. People don’t understand that if you buy a player for £150,000 it’s not the money you pay for him which is the big issue the wages he wants .... that £150,000 can end up costing the club 3 or £400,000.
Our approach is to bring young players through on your own wage structure and, only when you have to sell to pay for reinforcements

MG Survival for Chester City. The only way you can survive is by breaking even. We know we can’t just build the crowds up overnight. The main way forward at the moment, subject to the Bosman ruling is that we have to develop our own youngsters and bring them in to the first team. When the time is right .... sell at the right time. Wimbledon have done it successfully over the years. I think the Wimbledon dream, of what they have managed to do has gone now. But we’ve got to aim to get to the top of the Nationwide League, if nothing else. You’ve got to do that gradually over a period of time. Look at what Dario Gradi has achieved at Crewe he’s done a brilliant job there. You’ve got to build a small club up like that gradually.

JOHN We’re obviously not going to get the gates to sustain us we need somebody who is going to bring in more sponsors.

MG If you look at Crewe’s stadium, you’ve got the answer. Why are Manchester United’s season tickets cheaper than some First Division clubs’? If we can break even then we’ll put our prices down, but we’re not breaking even yet. Our facilities are probably better than most in our division.

VI JENNAWAY Do the panel think that the male attitude to women in the game is the same as in the Seventies – women shouldn’t be here?

NT Harry McNally? (Big breath from Harry and lots of laughter).

HM Oh dear. What a surprise. I think I’ll pass on this one. NT Kevin Ratcliffe?

KR It’s a little bit of a male chauvinist world isn’t it? They have men’s nights out but very few womens’ nights out. I don’t know why.

BW As far as attendance goes here. We did run a theme day when ladies could get in at half priced but the Equal Opportunities Board won’t allow us to do that any more.

KR ‘Cos Neil Fisher can’t play on the right..... When you’re down to the bare bones .... It’s like Sam Aiston coming in – he’s right footed but he’s a better left winger. I couldn’t see Fish playing down the right hand side because he hasn’t got the pace to go past people and he’s better cutting inside on his right foot when he’s playing on the left wing.

SS The fans get on (Noteman’s) back when he’s on the right.

HM As far as Bosman is concerned – it’s the blind leading the blind at the moment. No-one really knows .... At the moment we have a tribunal system.... it seems inevitable that sooner of later the Bosman ruling will be a free for all here. When that happens I think it will be difficult. Do you have people on long contracts of eight or ten years and then find out after two years – “Oh we’ve made a right ricket here”?

KR I agree with Harry. We don’t know where we are at the moment. Especially lower down. They’re supposed to be a ruling that players over twenty-four are going to be able to leave on frees. Now that would be a kick in the teeth to the likes of us. With the likes of Chris Priest, Ian Jenkins, Julian Alsford, Spencer Whelan, and David Flitcroft on board to think that they will be able to just go and go to a club that’s going to offer them more wages. It’s a case of the rich getting richer again.

MG The ludicrous thing about Bosman is .... we’ve all known it was in the pipeline. I went to a talk at the FA six months ago and they were just discussing it as though it was a new problem. They’ve known it was coming for a long time. There should have been remedies, leadership from the top. It’s chaos. They’re waiting for someone in this country to do a Bosman and effectively challenge the internal transfer system. That’s one of the reasons why feeder clubs have been mentioned, because we’re talking about getting paid for developing players as you go along. It might be one of the ways forward.

BW The situation with the kit manufacturer is that we had a two year deal with an option of a third year. We’ll have a look at what’s available in the market place to see whether there’s a better deal for Chester City and it’s probable that we will look at a new strip. I realise that it’s expensive but it’s only 50p or so extra a week. These are the costs of football.

MG Whether we stay or not with our kit manufacturer, their terms are that we produce one new kit a year. So, yes we will have to have a new kit next season. The reason is that with the amount of replica kits we sell which, compared to other clubs is small fry .... terms of contract say that we have to change our kit every season. They wanted us to change our shirts twice or have three shirts a season but we put our foot down. We were aiming for stability but it’s the kit manufacturers that are telling us to do this.