So, what's the deal with Chester and two-year contracts?
Eight years on from a dark day, the narrative around longer deals persists still
It is an evening few who were there will forget any time soon.
Eight years on from reforming from the ashes of the debt-ridden Chester City business, one of the cornerstones of Chester Football Club was around financial sustainability, and that success would be achieved while still holding those values true.
On a grim night in the Blues Bar on January 26, 2018, the extent of Chester’s financial problems were laid bare to supporters who had gathered, with a large turnout having become aware of some rumblings of discontent, and that the financial picture would be a bleak one painted at the first City Fans United meeting of the year.
When it was revealed that the club would need £50,000 in the short term in order to avoid going out of business “within months” it sparked shock and anger, with calls for board resignations and accountability.
Of course, the club would rally through fan donations and even an All Star Game at the Deva Stadium, but the scars remained. To an extent, they still do.
On that particular evening, given the struggles of the club on the pitch in the National League, with Jon McCarthy having been replaced by Marcus Bignot, some of the ire was aimed at the decisions to offer two-year deals to some players who hadn’t delivered on the pitch but who were on, by Chester’s wage structure, good money. McCarthy himself had been an expensive fire as he had signed an extension to his deal as boss almost 12 months previous, a deal that was supposed to take him through to May 2019.
Two-year deals were seen as onerous. With relegation to the National League North looming and there being no onus on the players to rip up their contracts and leave, the budget for 2018/19 had looked incredibly challenged.
That season, Bernard Morley and Anthony Johnson took the helm as managers, was about stabilising the club more than anything. On the back of what happened in January of 2018, two-year deals were viewed with understandable concern, and most of the deals that Chester have done in the years since have been one-year deals. That isn’t out of kilter with the level of football, however.
This season the Blues enter a new era under the stewardship of manager Phil Parkinson. Ten players have been signed on permanent deals, with an 11th to be announced this week, with a central midfielder arriving having completed a medical last week.
