We commented in December on the sorry state of English Blue Square Premier club Chester City FC:

Poor Chester City, of England’s Football Conference. Imagine waking up the day after Christmas and finding that your club had appointed as Director of Football a man who had led another club (Halesowen) into severe financial peril and expulsion from the FA Cup, and who had received a year-long touchline ban after clashing with one of his own players? That’s what Chester fans discovered on Boxing Day, as they learned their former owner, Stephen Vaughan, had appointed Morrell Maison in that position.

This is the same Morrell Maison who only two months ago was arrested as part of a police investigation into fraud at Halesowen.

Vaughan himself is pretty much the opposite of a white knight. Only last month, he was banned from operating as a company director for eleven years for fraud while he ran Widnes Rugby Club. Following this, he became the first club owner to fail the Football Association’s Fit and Proper Persons test, and was told he had 21 days to divest of his majority stake in Chester City. Vaughan simply passed on the shares to his son, also called Stephen, to skirt the ruling. He claims the family are looking to sell their share.

This latest news caps off a terrible 2009 for Chester City. Relegated from the Football League at the end of last season, they were given a 25 point deduction to start the 2009-10 season for financial irregularities. They sit bottom of the Conference National league today, still on -3 points.

Six weeks on, and things have only gotten worse. This week, their game against Forest Green Rovers was called off when Chester could not field a team. The coach supposed to take the team to the game from their home, Deva Stadium, never left as neither the coach company nor the players had been paid. And then their home game against Wrexham was also called off, after the police pulled out over unpaid bills.

City fans have become so disaffected by the state of affairs that they boycotted their previous home game, with just 400 fans showing up. Yesterday their supporters’ trust, City Fans United, wrote an open letter calling for the club to be wound up and started over under democratic supporter ownership:

The current owner has forfeited the right to be associated with our great City’s once proud football team.  It is painful beyond measure to say this as loyal Chester City supporters but we must and we will start again.  The scale of debt incredibly incurred in such a short space of time renders the Club (Chester City Football Club 2004 Ltd) beyond redemption.  We are therefore calling on the football authorities to act swiftly and decisively to put the Club out of its miserable state.  Further delay will simply prolong the agony and will not result in anything positive.

We would like to reassure all Chester City Supporters that this is not the end – but the beginning of a community led football club that we can all be proud of.  We have already begun to talk to the Football authorities, the Council and teams that have been through similar experiences (such as AFC Telford, AFC Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester).  We are certain that a football club in Chester will rise again, better than ever.

We know it will be tough and we do not underestimate the hard work and hurdles that will need to be cleared to make it happen. We will need the support of everyone who has supported Chester in the past together with others who now might want to work with us to build a new Club from scratch.

Finally, we would like to reassure the FA and other football authorities that we are determined that the new football club in Chester will be run to the highest standards.  It will be inclusive and will fulfil an active role in the community.  It will be a great advert for football and everything positive about our national game.  We are more aware than anyone of how tarnished the reputation of Chester has become due to the way in which our club’s affairs have been conducted for a considerable period.

All we ask is the opportunity to put that right as soon as possible.

The indignity of failing to fulfil last night’s fixture at Forest Green followed by the announcement that we are unable to host our local rivals Wrexham on Sunday means that Chester City Football Club has effectively ceased to be. We have been tested to the limit as supporters and our support base has been driven down to a rump through incompetence and worse.

Supporters’ Direct, a national organisation that promotes responsible club governance, has followed this up with a statement to Football Association Lord Triesman calling for a reformed club to be set-up:

The news that Chester City FC will fail for the second time in two days to fulfil a fixture, this time at home to Wrexham this weekend, surely signals the end for the Club.

Whilst the end of Chester City FC in its current guise may seem like a tragedy it is not, and we call on The FA to do what it can to pull the plug and enable a new supporter-owned Club to rise from the ashes so the story has a happy ending. We have also written to The FA Chairman Lord Triesman today to express this view.

Indeed fans of Chester have known for months that it is only a matter of time, and have already en-masse made the decision to boycott matches, and back a reformed club.

The winding up of Chester City will provide Chester City fans and City Fans United (CFU), the Supporters Trust, with the chance to reform their football club as a democratically owned, community football club, owned by those who are dedicated to it instead of people who have little interest but their own, and one which causes the authorities to be proud, and not embarrassed.

Alongside Supporters Direct (SD), Trust-owned clubs AFC Telford United and FC United of Manchester have already provided support and guidance to CFU to develop their vision and their practical plans for the Club, and when the inevitable end comes, we will all be stepping up this support to ensure that fans of Chester have the best possible start to this new part of their journey.

The news that Chester City FC will fail for the second time in two days to fulfil a fixture, this time at home to Wrexham this weekend, surely signals the end for the Club.

If this happens — and a new “democratically owned, community football club, owned by those who are dedicated to it instead of people who have little interest but their own” is indeed established — the better good for supporters of Chester City FC could actually come out of this mess.

Today, Chester were suspended from the Blue Square Premier and given seven days to explain themselves. It would be better for all if the club was put out of its misery in its present condition, and the supporters given a chance to build a new structure that can last for the greater good of the club.

EDIT: Read this by Two Hundred Percent on the “truth of the debt”. Truly staggering.

Big Story
Alright, so some of us might not pay very much to watch Mansfield Town, but here is an interesting promotion by the club for their game this weekend against Gateshead, as they let supporters set their own ticket price:

Blue Square Premier side Mansfield Town are offering fans the chance to pay whatever they want to see their home game against Gateshead on Saturday. The club’s owners thought up the scheme to boost the crowd and thank fans and the people of Mansfield for their support since the 2008 takeover.

“Let’s pack the ground for this match and roar the team on to victory,” said chairman Andrew Perry.

The scheme also applies to away fans at the 10,000-capacity Field Mill ground. People will be able to turn up on the day and pay any amount to watch the game. They will be able to sit where they want, except in the seats reserved for season-ticket holders.

Of course, one couldn’t do this regularly, or no-one (presumably) would buy season tickets. Unless, perhaps, they were pairing that up with an initiative from FC United of Manchester we mentioned last summer, who decided to let fans set their own season ticket prices. A scheme that worked very well for FCUM, in fact.

Will we see more clubs around the world try either initiative to boost interest and give supporters a chance to pay their club what they think they’re worth to watch?

Worldwide News

• The Culture of Soccer has an excellent piece on a new film that sounds worth checking out, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Pablo Miralles’s documentary on the US-Mexico soccer rivalry, Gringos at the Gate.
• Here’s a strange piece by Louise Taylor in the Guardian, in which she simultaneously questions why Victor Moses, sold by Crystal Palace to Wigan this week, attracted so much attention, and suggests it’s because Premier League managers and scouts rarely watch Championship games in person…and then says she’s never seen Moses play, either. Still, overall an interesting piece on why Football League talent may be overlooked in England.
• David Conn concludes that the spending in the transfer window in England, at its lowest for some years, reflects the fact that “the Premier League clubs have suddenly realised they cannot keep borrowing and spending to fuel rampant transfer inflation.” Finally!
• Steven Goff has the latest on DC’s stadium efforts…And it’s more no news is bad news for DC United fans.

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Barrow AFC's home ground, Holker Street, after a match against AFC Wimbledon in the Blue Square Premier. November 14th, 2009.

Photo credit: Chalfont Don on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Well, no-one saw this coming: Ebbsfleet United, the “world’s first web community owned club”, has lost most of its community in its second year of operation and the club is spiralling towards disaster on and off the field.

It’s hard to say just how unsurprising this is. Eighteen months ago, we noted that the bubble had burst, with interest from members on being involved with the MyFootballClub website declining dramatically.

The loss in membership was clear by February this year, as 23,000 members did not renew from their initial investment (a puppy isn’t just for Christmas, chaps), leaving just 9,000 paying their dues of £35 annually.

The club’s budget was slashed, and Ebbsfleet now sit second from bottom in the Blue Square Premier, with just nine points from eighteen games.

Still, the venture has substantially boosted the profile of the football journalist Will Brooks who started the whole thing.

Now Brooks, as he told the Independent’s Steve Tongue, has come up with a new plan to save the club: asking people to pay more. “We are working on a new model where fewer members pay more. For example, 3,000 members paying £10 a month could sustain the club,” he said.

So, the club only has 9,000 increasingly frustrated folks left as members, yet Brooks thinks a third of them will be willing to almost triple their investment and keep doing so to save Brook’s model, which was flawed from the start?

One hopes that in looking at this experiment, observers are able to distinguish it from anything to do with real community-owned clubs who have actual sustainable business plans involving supporters who have a long-lasting connection to their team.

The Big Story

UEFA again expressed concern at the spending by the likes of Man City, with general secretary David Taylor commenting “I would say in this financial climate, it is surprising – a little bit destabilizing of the market”. Taylor goes on to voice concerns about the level of debt in English football, worrying clubs will spend too much to match City: “There are a number of English clubs where the value of the club itself has fallen significantly and they are effectively on the market,” he said.

Indeed, this report on the plunging value of many English clubs — a number of which were recently sold for less than City bid for Joleon Lescott — ought to wake folks up. The business is not always a fairytale.

So why do these warnings fall on deaf ears to so many administrators and fans in English football?  Twohundredpercent says “Just as no-one thought it would happen to them when it happened to Leeds United, and no-one thought that it would happen to them when it happened to Sheffield Wednesday, Charlton Athletic or any of a sizeable number of other clubs, so it is that most football supporters are still thinking that it will never happen to them.” Of course, it will.

Worldwide News

• Marcela Mora y Araujo has another excellent article on the financial crisis in Argentina we mentioned last week, commenting that the “the worst-case scenario” of no football kicking off as scheduled on August 14th remains a serious prospect, especially with the undercurrent to the discussion centering on the thorny issue of internet gambling.
• Looks like Some People On The Pitch have another good series coming, with a new weekly round-up of all things French — to start things off, they preview Ligue 1.
• And another excellent season preview comes at SoccerLens, where Gary Andrews looks at the runners and riders in England’s fifth tier Blue Square Premier. It’s hard to see anyone stopping Luton (as another preview agrees), relegated from League Two for financial reasons — and will this season see the final unravelling of internet fan-0wned Ebbsfleet United?
• Match of the century! Easter Island, located in the Pacific Ocean around 3,500km from the nearest point of mainland Chile, is hosting its first ever official match on Wednesday against Colo Colo in a game to be broadcast nationally in Chile.

North American News

• We wrote today about the touchy dynamic of players tweeting, but it’s spreading much higher in the food chain — Chivas de Guadalajara’s owner Jorge Vergera might have found the perfect medium for his short temper, as on Twitter he blamed his players for a recent defeat and defended their coach.
• In a very long piece at Yanks Abroad, the father of Kenny Cooper — recently transferred from FC Dallas to 1860 Munich — rips into the league’s treatment of Americans, saying MLS is substantially underpaying homegrown talent and forcing Americans abroad, warning of labor strife ahead: ‘There are all these stipulations and rules, but to me they’re all one-sided. It’s going to culminate with the union and the MLS getting together and agreeing to respectfully disagree. I would hope that the players don’t even think about going on strike, but something’s got to give.”  In this economic climate, it’s hard to see the players having a lot of leverage, however.
• Speaking of the MLS Players Union, the negotiations on the Collective Bargaining Agreement are just revving up — the Sports Business Journal reports the players are asking for guaranteed contracts and free agency. The latter appears to be a bargaining chip to gain the former, but even that seems unlikely — just how far are players prepared to go to get a good deal?

“I look forward to the experiment but I think it will be an utter disaster, although I could be very wrong,” said Sullivan, who spoke to BBC Sport before the takeover announcement was made.

Sullivan predicted the website could face insurmountable hurdles if fans were involved in player transfers.

“If a player is in demand you need an instant decision, you can’t go on the internet for six or 12 hours and let people vote,” added Sullivan.

From the other side of the barricades, many fans of non-league football are concerned about the experiment, seeing myfootballclub.co.uk as coming in and messing with the existing community that surrounds a small club such as Ebbsfleet United. Blogger twohundredpercent, for example, rips into the entire concept:

A period of contract signing will now begin which, it seems likely, will result in another club being taken over by a group of people that know nothing and care little more about the long term wellbeing of Ebbsfleet United FC. Whether that organisation has 2 members of 20,000 strikes me as being utterly irrelevant. Ultimately, this club has been sold to be the plaything of a few thousand would-be Alex Fergusons. Whether this proves to be beneficial to the club and its supporters is open to question, but one thing remains certain. Myfootballclub and Jason Botley have done very nicely indeed out of this, and would appear to be the only thing that matters to them.

The choice is interesting as Ebbsfleet supporters seem to have accepted fairly meekly another big chance in recent times: they were previously Gravesend & Northfleet, but in May changed their name to reflect sponsorship by Eurostar, who use Ebbsfleet International railway station. We’ll soon find out how the supporters take to their new fan overlords, and how manager Liam Daish (who will stay on) deals with MFC’s role in team affairs.

Here’s Ebbsfleet are at play last month:

This will shine a spotlight on English football far, far below the focus of 95% of coverage on the Premiership. Whilst some will argue a gimmick threatening a club’s tradition is unwelcome, English football still thrives in the lower reaches like nowhere else in the world. Indeed, supporter ownership there has been crucial in recent years, with supporters’ trusts stepping in to save numerous clubs threatened with extinction. That kind of native effort is, of course, vastly different from myfootballclub.co.uk’s approach.

But the latter does reflect a growing interest in supporter involvement; Drew Carey, a member of Barcelona himself, hinted the new Seattle team would give fans a role in running the club. There is already an American imitator of myfootballclub.co.uk attempting to launch as well.

But will this more extreme experiment work, on and off the field?

Update: see here for more about the concerns and questions about the ownership.