Chester chairman: "We have to be careful as a Board we don't sit up here and not hear and listen to what the fans are saying"

Nick Phillipson explains plans growth and positive outcome of Board appeal

Chester fans on the Harry McNally Terrace (CHARLIE STOCKTON)

Like many Chester fans, Nick Phillipson’s connection to the Blues dates back to the halcyon days of the 1970s and the fabled League Cup run.

For a generation of Blues supporters, the memories of that run to the semi-final of the competition, conquering English champions Leeds United along the way, defeating Newcastle United before being narrowly pipped to a Wembley spot by Aston Villa over two legs, will live with them forever.

It was a time where Chester legends were made; Trevor Storton, John ‘Jesse’ James, Grenville Millington, Terry Owen and others. It was the pinnacle of supporting Chester, where history was being played out in front of sell-out, thronging crowds at the old Sealand Road, where Chester was being put in the national sporting spotlight thanks to its remarkable football exploits.

The 1980s were tough, so, too, the 1990s, although there were some bright spots during that decade, notably the 1993/94 promotion-winning season and the strong Kevin Ratcliffe teams between 1995 and 1998. But financial chaos has always been a couple of steps away for Chester, whether that be under the regimes of Eric Barnes, Mark Guterman, Terry Smith or Stephen Vaughan, with the demise of Chester City Football Club as an entity the darkest moment in a proud club’s history.

Phillipson, who took over as City Fans United chairman, ergo becoming Chester chairman in December, taking the role on from Kieron Shiel, is of the generation that has seen the peaks and the troughs, and now approaching his retirement age he wants to continue to pour his energy into helping the club raise its standing against the most challenging financial backdrop the game in this country has ever presented.

Earlier this week AFC Fylde released their financial results for a season when they competed in the National League. The Coasters, relegated last season, are vying for promotion back from the National League North at the very first attempt under the guidance of Chester legend Craig Mahon, but the scale of the financial challenge facing the Blues was laid bare when compared with teams they are directly competing against.

Fylde made a £44,000 profit for 2024/25. For any club to make a profit in the Wild West financial state that clubs find themselves in at present is no mean feat. Chester, of course, made a profit of £53,000 for the same financial period as a fan-owned club, where there is no scope for them to exist in the red.

The club’s commercial income was pegged at £258,000, with £104,000 of that coming from the Boost The Budget initiative where fan donations contribute to the playing budget. For contrast, two of Fylde owner David Haythornthwaite’s companies paid more than £1.6m in sponsorship to the Coasters for the same period. A sum the same as Chester’s entire revenue for the financial year.

Therein lies the challenge for Chester around how they manage to compete against clubs with such spending power, with more and more clubs now attracting individuals with deep pockets and a penchant for losing money hand over fist, because football is not a profitable industry.

The challenge for the Blues Board, chaired by Phillipson, whose career saw him take in a spell as a finance director for an NHS Trust, as well as running his own business, is to try and deliver more from the fan-owned model and find ways of unlocking greater value to allow the playing budget to grow, without placing the club at significant financial risk.

Speaking to The Seal, Phillipson said: “I think we have personal views, but at the end of the day we have a collective called the Board, and whatever our views are, however normal or at one end of the spectrum they are, we have to work for the benefit of the club and in the best interests of the members.

“That’s always an interesting challenge because we have members with very different views on the direction we should go, from staying 100% fan‑owned to seeing whether anyone out there wants to put some money into the club.

“I think there are very few people out there who might want to do that, or they’re people you might not want to deal with. We’ve been there before. People of my age, and certainly anyone 30–40 years old or older, remember those sorts of people. I won’t name them, but clearly we know we’ve had issues in the past.

“There aren’t too many Wrexham situations out there in that respect, so I think the fan‑owned model is where we are.

“I think we have to maximise that, whether it’s 100% or whether we allow benefactors to put money in. That’s fine as long as there are no strings attached. Clearly most people would want some strings attached, so we have to be very careful.

“We budget very tightly. We budget £1.6m, and it’s going to be more this year in income and expenditure, and we basically budget to break even or make a small surplus every year. To micromanage that down to, let’s say, a £25,000 surplus every year, with so many moving parts in a football club, is almost impossible. Some things you can adjust, and some things are just the football world. Things happen outside the club or inside football that are bigger than the club, and we have to deal with them.

“So setting a budget with a £25,000 surplus and sticking to it is almost impossible. I don’t just mean pressures on the playing budget, there are lots of other pressures around running the club, both on matchdays and in terms of facilities. Something can suddenly break and we’ve got to find the money. Can we find the money to do it? We probably have to, otherwise we can’t hold football matches here. Some things are essential while others you can park and say, ‘that’s on the wish list, we’ll improve it when we can.’

“Because of that, we’ve got less scope for changes during the year. We do regular budget monitoring through board meetings and through Neil Berry, our treasurer, and we’re always projecting where we’ll end up at the end of the year. We do that every month — every couple of months — and usually by the second half of the season we’re already thinking about next year’s budget. The aim is to increase the budgets: more income, more sponsorship, and tapping into areas we don’t currently reach.

“It’s difficult to go back to the fans each time and say we’re going to do something else and we’d like you to contribute, when you’ve already got season tickets, Boost the Budget, the lottery, the 50–50 on matchdays — there are so many income schemes already out there. To suddenly come up with something else and ask the same group of people to cough up again is tough.

“So we do need to look wider, whether that’s with businesses, sponsorships, or individuals out there who want to help us. That’s fine, as long as they’re not asking for anything in return — and of course that does limit us. But there is scope commercially to do more, and we’re looking to do more.”

One area that the club have been keen to address is that of the amount of Board members they have, with Shiel’s re-election at the November AGM the only standing candidate. That has left the Board light in numbers, and at risk of falling below the required number as set out in the club’s constitution.

That prompted them to put out an appeal for new members to potentially be co-opted to help carry some of the burden and bring in fresh ideas, with Phillipson pleased over the response the plea received.

Said the Chester chairman: “We had three vacancies and only one was filled, with Kieran coming back on the board and re‑elected. So we’ve still got at least two vacancies to fill.

“We put out, I’ll call it a job advert, but seeking expressions of interest to see if anyone was interested in joining the Board as what we call a co‑opt. So between now and November we’d co‑opt somebody, and then in October or November, when the AGM is, they could stand for full election, be elected or not. But they’ll have an idea of what a Board role is all about.

“The two areas that we’re lacking at the moment in portfolio terms are fundraising and fan engagement and membership. They’re the two portfolios. The other ones have been covered by existing board members.

“The positive is, because we were uncertain what sort of response we’d get, having had nobody stand, we thought, ‘are we going to get anybody?’ But we’ve had 15 expressions of interest. A varying range of people, to be fair, but certainly some that I think have the capability and the skill set to join the board. So we’re in the process of shortlisting those.

“That’s encouraging and at least it means for the next six months we’ll co‑opt, I think, just the two, which is where we started the process. Let them do what they can with those portfolios, learn what being a Board member involves. It does involve a certain amount of time and we can’t deny that. It is a commitment.

“We have monthly Board meetings, usually on a matchday. Then we have an informal meeting, we have one on Monday night, a Teams meeting, so we don’t have to meet here necessarily. But there’s that, then there’s all the emails floating around, decisions that get taken in between board meetings, and meeting people that we need to talk to outside the club — all sorts of things. So it is a time commitment. Not everyone can do it.

“Clearly we’d like some younger board members, not people who are either retired or semi‑retired. I’m fortunate I’m in the position, I’m just about retired now, so I’ve got the time. We’d like some younger members. We’d like to have more women on the Board. We’ve had them in the past, but we haven’t got them at the moment. So it would be good to be a little bit more diverse in those areas. But we can only go with those who express an interest. So we’ve got an interesting mix there. I think some certainly could. Others perhaps may be more helpful on the voluntary side, maybe on working groups, because we’re trying to reconstitute a couple of working groups that we’ve had in the past.

“We have to be careful as a Board that we don’t sit up here and we don’t hear and listen to what the fans are saying. We don’t have to look at Deva Chat because that will give you all sorts of feedback, some of it not necessarily very helpful. But clearly fans have their own views on all sorts of things at the club. How do we make sure we hear that feedback? Obviously the engagement group that we’ve mentioned, particularly the supporters one, is a good way.

“There’s groups within that like the Exiles, the Senior Blues, we’ve got the Cestrian 1885s, Blacon Seals and hopefully the Inclusive Blues will go in there. There’s also the new Youth Forum that will have representatives. So we’ll get some feedback from those groups which will come in to us, which then can be fed to us. Be it good or bad, we want to hear it, and we’ll see what we can do about it, what the response is. Is it something we can learn from? Is it something we can produce?

“We’re trying to get more from the youngsters because CFU membership is good, I think it’s about 1,600. But there’s very few youngsters in there. We’re trying to get more, hence the Youth Forum, trying to get more if not at 14 but certainly at the 18, 20, 21 age group. We’re trying to get more people to come along and be involved with the club because it’s their future in a sense. The club is theirs in a few years’ time. We’re all retired or whatever we’ve done. So it’s important to get their views as well as the more mature members who, as I say, we are getting some of their feedback now.

“I think that’s an interesting positivity that’s coming out of what we’ve done, that hopefully we’ll fill those gaps and we’ll be able to operate better as a board but also as a club in the wider sense.”