Chester wound up in High Court (From Croydon Guardian)

Chester wound up in High Court

12:53pm Wednesday 10th March 2010 in

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Chester City have been wound up in the High Court - but a fans' group have vowed to resurrect the club.

City were liquidated over debts owed to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs in a brief hearing this morning.

But David Evans of Chester City Fans United told Sky Sports News: "125 years of history have been extinguished today but that's just the body of the club - its soul lives on."

A new club, along the lines of AFC Wimbledon, is the group's goal and Evans continued: "Today is the day to say to everybody that our club will be run in a professional way and be a credit to our city and to football.

"Our model is AFC Wimbledon or AFC Telford, where a new club has been run on a very prudent basis.

"We want to atone for the way the club has been run - we see this as our responsibility even though it wasn't our fault."

Chief executive Bob Gray hopes the group can ensure Chester continues to be represented by a club - but admitted their boycott of matches was one of "a multitude" of factors contributing to the decline of the club.

Attendances at the Deva Stadium hit an all-time record low as CFU called on fans to stay away from home games in protest against the club's owners, the Vaughan family.

Gray told Sky Sports News: "(There were) a multitude of things. Poor performances on the pitch when we needed to win games that would possibly have turned the corner for us, the boycott never helped - when you're staging a football game and you're losing money and can't afford to pay the players, it's difficult.

"It's a very difficult dividing line to find between being successful and unsuccessful, and unfortunately we have gone down the unsuccessful route.