TROUBLED Chester City announced last night that they had accepted a 25-point deduction and that they would be allowed to face Grays Athletic in tomorrow’s Blue Square Premier fixture.
While City’s directors were upbeat during their announcement, the Football Association refused to confirm or deny that they had granted the Deva Stadium outfit the affiliation they had been seeking. However, it is expected that the FA will officially sanction the club’s affiliation status later this morning.
Chester’s secretarial department now face a race against time to register all their players to enable them to play in Essex tomorrow. Last night the registrations still hadn’t been accepted by the governing bodies.
This week has seen a succession of missed deadlines and doubts as to whether tomorrow’s match would proceed. Yesterday Grays Athletic issued a press release stating that they were “disappointed with both the FA and the Football Conference”, because of the delay in sanctioning City’s affiliation.
City’s manager, Mick Wadsworth, has had to keep morale high among his players in this peculiar and rather unique pre-season period. The former Gretna boss has only been able to see his squad perform in one public pre-season practice match but has arranged a couple of friendlies behind closed doors.
Wadsworth has a number of injury problems as he prepares for the trip to the south east – definitely out will be defenders Shaun Kelly and Tim Ryan, as well as striker Gregg Blundell. Uruguayan midfielder Fabian Yantoro is considered as extremely doubtful for the game.
