Following a meeting on Monday 26th February, the board of City Fans United (CFU) are pleased to announce that Simon Olorenshaw has agreed to take the role of Chair of City Fans United.
Simon, who was co-opted to the board 4 weeks ago, will lead the board in developing a strategy that will place the club in a strong position for the future, whilst also providing the drive to address the current challenges both on and off the pitch.

Upon his appointment, Simon said, “I am privileged to be re-appointed. Despite the current situation we find ourselves in, I am confident that there is a future for our football club. We have a duty to our supporters, our youth and our community to win this battle and move forward. There is going to have to be a lot of hard work put in over the coming months, but with everyone’s support we will achieve our goal of being a sustainable fans owned club.”

The board have also announced that a revised target of £150,000 has been set to help with the cashflow situation at the club. The previous target of £50,000 which was set to solve the club’s immediate cashflow problem was passed two weeks ago, and tonight the current amount raised stands at £81,201 – and this does not yet include two fundraising events that took place last week which have raised a combined figure of over £9000, and once this has been banked will see the current total raised to over £90,000 which is an incredible achievement in such a short space of time and will go towards seeing the club survive beyond the end of the season.

The next event on the calendar is the City Fans United members meeting, which takes place this Thursday (1st March) in the Blues Bar at the Swansway Chester Stadium. The meeting gets underway at 7.30pm and the newly appointed Chair is keen to see as many members at the meeting as possible, “The support at the recent open fans meeting was fantastic, and we ask everyone to come down on Thursday night to not just hear about our plans for the immediate future, but also to come down and hear the latest on the financial situation which I know everyone is keen to hear given the recent fundraising efforts, and also to hear from the various working groups that have been meeting every fortnight at the club since January.”

Board portfolios are also being finalised at present, and will be covered at the meeting on Thursday night too, along with a preview of next season’s home kit choices.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Our City. Our Community. Our Club.

They say a month in politics is a long time, well a month at Chester Football Club is a lifetime!
It is just four weeks ago that the financial plight of our football club became public knowledge but the reaction of the fans, the city and the footballing community as a whole has been absolutely fantastic.

In less than three weeks we raised the incredible sum of £75,000 through raffles, auctions, donations, an upsurge in CFU members and of course, the fantastic All Stars football match last Thursday which also featured Sam and Ian Pemberton, who had bid £2,000 for the privilege to be involved. Special thanks goes out to Jeff Banks who was the lynchpin in organising this match with the invaluable support of Colin Murray and Michael Owen. There are still many items of memorabilia from this match that will be made available for fans to bid on over the coming weeks, so keep a look out.

We also had that memorable night when our Youth Academy side triumphed against Gateshead in the National League Under 19 Alliance Cup in front of 1,065 supporters who had raised over £12,000 that night. How special must it have felt for Cain Noble to celebrate his winning goal in front of a packed East Stand, a memory to treasure. But we cannot stop now, we must continue with our fundraising efforts to guarantee the certainty of our future.

Off the field there have been a number of changes to the CFU Board with four Directors stepping down. We would therefore like to thank Jonny Hughes, Anne Salmon, Neil Bellis and David O’Toole for their dedication whilst serving on the board.

Those Directors have been replaced by four co-optees, Jeff Banks, Calvin Hughes, Mark Howell, Simon Olorenshaw and the addition of a non-exec Director, Rich Lynes, who will extend his role as Head of the Governance Working Group into the Board environment to ensure that the required checks and balances are always in place when the Board are making our decisions. Once the FA have approved these appointments we can formalise all roles and focus on ensuring the survival of our precious football club and make sure that we have a team to support next season.

On the field, last Saturday showed that the feel-good factor created by the euphoria of the All Stars match had reached the first team. Probably our best home performance of the season brought us a valuable three points, given the results of most of the teams above us. On Tuesday, we really do believe we deserved more from the game having shown great passion in the match on the back of Saturday’s result. The last two games have shown that when we get behind the players on the pitch there is a willingness to perform and play for the shirt, we’ve got 7 home games left, lets make each one of them a cup-tie and create an atmosphere that lifts the lads.

As a Board we appreciate how difficult it must be in these uncertain times to prepare for a game when there is the possibility that players will move on at short notice, but we hope you would agree that the players Marcus is bringing in to the squad demonstrates that we all have the ambition to turn this season around, and that’s where you, the supporters, come into play again.

We’d also like to wish everyone making the trip down to Dagenham tomorrow a very safe journey. and also to the Chester Exiles attending the game we’d like to thank you all for your support, and hopefully we can return with all three points.

On and off the field we can, and we will survive.
Andrew, Calvin, David W, David H-W, Jeff, Laurence, Mark, Mark, Mike, Rich, Simon”