Keith Alexander and Chester City

As stated already, when Chester first appointed Mark Wright as their manager, owner Stephen Vaughan asked me what I thought of Wright.

I wasn't very complimentary about Wright, specifically his attitude to people - including myself.

Keith Alexander had also applied for the job. At the time he was director of coaching at Lincoln City.

Out of the blue Alexander called me up to ask what I knew about the vacant post at the Deva Stadium. I told him I thought Wright would get it.

Alexander asked me not to report the fact that he had applied as he had not been back at Lincoln long and he appreciated their offer of work. But he was obviously keen to get back into management full-time.

I agreed, only for Vaughan to mention his name to the local Chester press.

A year or so earlier I saw Alexander at an England semi-professional side at Altrincham's Moss Lane ground. As the Northwich Victoria boss, he was scouting for non-league talent. He was one of the few managers I saw there that night.

We spoke several times subsequently mostly by phone. He was not averse to returning my call from his Caribbean holidays. He operated above and beyond the call of duty. Certainly above the level of Mark Wright who would often ask me to call him back when he was at his gym in Southport and then just ignore my call.

In 2008 Alexander took over as boss of Macclesfield. Earlier this month (March 2, 2010) he passed away after Macclesfield's1-0 defeat away at Notts County. He was 53.

If you look at life being about having the pleasure of meeting people then Alexander was one of those people who made life a pleasure.

I enjoyed following his career. He was brilliant at spotting lower league talent. He put effort into his football, he put effort into treating people well.

Tributes came flooding in. Everyone respected him.

By a strange twist of fate I also spent a week in Tobago with his delightful sister, who showed me round the island on behalf of the tourist board. She is as nice as he was. Lovely family.

Chester City and Stephen Vaughan – Part II

Now I’m going to take you back to June 26, 2001 – the first time I met Stephen Vaughan. At the time he had just become involved with east Manchester club Droylsden, owned and managed by Dave Pace (who remains in his dual role today).

In the summer of 2001, as I sat in the Butcher’s Arms stand with Vaughan and Pace, UniBond club Barrow’s future was far from secure. Scouser Vaughan was bullish and forthright, as he was in all our subsequent conversations. Vaughan has a reputation to be scared of. I heard stories before or meeting, I still hear them today. But he speaks honestly, respectfully and was always contactable – all the things a journalist appreciates. 

Stephen Vaughan feature

26 June 2001

by Garry Cook

Furious former Barrow chairman Stephen Vaughan has finally hit out at critics of his controversial reign at Holker Street.

In an exclusive interview, Vaughan has laid into current Bluebirds chairman Brian Keen and his board for their handling of the club which was booted out of the Conference in 1999.

Vaughan is angry at what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to dirty his name and heap the blame for the club’s problems firmly at his feet.

But the Liverpool-based boxing promoter, now a director at fellow Unibond club Droylsden where his business partner Dave Pace is the chairman, wants to put the record straight on his time at Holker Street, the legal problems the club has gone through since then and his real plans for the club’s future.

Sitting in the Butcher’s Arms club bar, his new home, Vaughan blasted: “Brian Keen says he has got no animosity towards me, well I have towards him and anybody else who thinks they have walked all over me up there. He has slandered my name on several occasions.

“They set out to stitch me up, which they’ve done. This is about people attempting to hang me out to dry.

“People didn’t expect me to be sitting around speaking with you now. As far as they were concerned, as they have said in a number of articles I will be dealing with, I was going to prison. Now, I might go to prison over something else I’ve done, but I won’t be going to prison over anything that’s gone on up there.”

While chairman of Barrow, Vaughan was arrested as part of an investigation into his investment of Barrow, and ownership of eleven acres of land, an office block, wine bar and a number of terraced houses. The investigation by Customs & Excise and the National Crime Unit was linked to Vaughan’s association with notorious jailed drug dealer Curtis Warren.

Vaughan said: “Nobody has come and charged with me anything and it’s gone on for two-and-a-half years. I’ve proved to the bodies concerned where the source of my monies came from. There’s nothing to charge me with. My association with Mr Warren was that I purchased a land cruiser from him. I also sold him a property.”

The former Barrow chairman makes no excuses for the company he keeps stating: “The clientele that goes with boxing attracts a lot of gangsters. I haven’t got a problem being associated with those people – I’d rather rub shoulders with them any day.”

Since Vaughan’s departure from Holker Street, the club has gone into liquidation and been thrown out of the Conference. But he says the club’s downfall is not of his doing. He is eager to point out that the club went into liquidation several months after he handed over the reigns to Phil Cowing and David Murgatroyd.

He said: “Cowing put the company into liquidation, him and Murgatroyd. I never took out of Barrow, I put in. I resigned from Barrow to deal with my own personal life after four years of substantial investment. Whatever my businesses are or whatever I’m supposed to be has got nothing to do with the fact that Barrow Football Club went into liquidation. I pumped money into Barrow and, as any chairman will tell you, the only way to keep a football club running, you’ve got to have a nice thick wallet. If they haven’t, tell them to forget it, because I have.”

He added: “I know why they got thrown out of the Conference – because they wouldn’t personally guarantee the debt.

“If it was me and Dave Pace in there we would have personally guaranteed that debt. I’ve done nothing that any other chairman hasn’t done. The debt incurred at Barrow Football Club was accumulated over the years. There were debts when I took over.

“The Conference threw Barrow Football Club out because they didn’t comply with the rules. Who is he [Keen] to break the rulebook? Who is this man? He’s taken on the Conference and lost and got the club relegated. Why couldn’t they just back-up the personal guarantees that were required to stay in the Conference? If he wants to be Mr Chairman, Mr Chairman has got to start spending money.

“They tried to dump the debt and set up and form a new company and take the affiliation of the company that they had dumped. When you buy a company you buy its assets and debts – that’s the way it works. You don’t go in and say ‘let’s start off today with not one penny owed here.’ That would be the ideal situation for the lot of us.”

Vaughan’s argument is that if those that controlled the club after him had continued to pay the club’s creditors with the £1,100 monthly Company Voluntary Arrangement he put into place, Barrow would not be in the mess it is today.

He has also vowed to return to the club once its legal wrangle is sorted out. He warned: “I’m saying to anyone in Cumbria that it is my intention to come back and purchase that place. I’ll lease it back to the club ands they can play football at Holker Street.

“If I fail in purchasing the Stadium, I’m going to make sure that someone pays the market rate, if not over, to outbid me. Brian Keen and anybody up there who thinks they’ve seen the back of me had better start thinking again. Brian Keen thinks he’s Jesus Christ but he’ll need more than bread and water to keep me away.”

And Vaughan is adamant that Barrow will never be under threat under his ownership. He has quashed rumours that he will sell the ground to supermarket chain Asda. Four years ago Vaughan negotiated a 21-year option worth £100,000 with Asda which gives them first option on Holker Street. But he insists that the deal was struck by Asda only to ensure that the ground was not sold to another retailer.

Vaughan has been so incensed by his misrepresentation that he even offered to publish his personal phone number to allow Barrow fans to discuss these issues with him. Addressing them he said: “The supporters have kept the club going, kept it afloat. I want them to know I have no hidden agenda, I am a fan too.”

Vaughan believes he will become the owner of the Holker Street ground after the conclusion of the club’s High Court case next January. He has already conceded with the liquidator that the sale of Holker Street to his company Northern Improvements was undervalued.

But with the liquidator likely to have to sell the ground to clear debts with creditors Cherry Tree Finance and Cumbria Business Group, Vaughan says he is well placed to return to the club he describes as his first love.

“If the liquidator says he wants to call Holker Street back to give it to Barrow Football Club he gives it back to me as the major shareholder,” explains Vaughan. “Me, as the major shareholder, will have to sell that stadium’s assets to pay of the creditors. I am the most substantial creditor. So I have an equitable right to redeem that loan before anybody else.”

He added: “I purchased the stadium for £410,000. What the liquidator said was that because only £110,000 changed hands, it was undervalued. But £300,000 had come in [to the club] through Northern Improvements [Vaughan’s company] and Stephen Vaughan personally. That makes me a preferential creditor.

“You’ve got a stadium that’s been sold to me. I don’t take any rent, so they say ‘let’s try and turn this over’. So they turn it over back to the shareholders. They give it back to the person they’ve just taken it off. You have to sell to satisfy the creditors – and the most substantial creditor is me again. I’m waiting with my hand out no matter which way it goes.

“So it’s like a bullying tactic. It’s only red tape. I’m not trying to justify myself – that’s exactly what I did. All this bollocks about fraud. It probably is red tape fraud, but it’s only a civil matter.

“Outside authorities got in my way, otherwise Barrow would have been in the Football League. All I did from the minute I went into the gates was build a brand new stand and build the stadium into Grade A criteria.  What I haven’t done for that club isn’t worth talking about. I built Barrow from a company that was going nowhere into a Conference club and the fact they went into liquidation was through no fault of mine.”

Ends.

Chester City vs Barrow, Stephen Vaughan vs Terry Smith

I’ve watched the demise of Chester City (in 2010) from a distance.
At the moment (late February) the club is on the brink of liquidation after a catalogue of financial crises.

Central to the story is their owner – technically former owner now – Stephen Vaughan who rescued the club from the disastrous ownership of previous incumbent Terry Smith almost a decade ago.

I interviewed American Smith after he appointed himself as Chester manager, a move which ultimately led to relegation from the Football League.

There was total joy amongst most long-suffering Chester fans when Vaughan took over from the hapless Smith.

I knew Vaughan before he took over as Chester boss. He had become involved behind the scenes at Dave Pace’s UniBond outfit Droylsden.

Previously, he was the owner of non-league Barrow when a financial clash with the authorities led to that club being liquidated and thrown out of the Conference.

In interviews Vaughan was as equally unapologetic about his treatment of Barrow as those Bluebirds fans were in their hatred of him.

I found Vaughan a very personable man to deal with. He could not have been more helpful to me. I was one of the first people he called after his shock takeover of Chester. Believe me it was a shock.

He even asked me what I thought of Mark Wright when he was considering appointing the former England defender as manager. I told him Wright’s attitude to people left a lot to be desired. Vaughan appointed him, on three separate occasions as it turned out.

The similarities in what has occurred at Chester and what did unfold at Barrow are frightening.

As a special treat for my readers I will publish several article and interviews I’ve done connected with Chester City Football Club. Coming soon are some Stephen Vaughan features, but first a September 28, 2001, statement from the then out-going chairman Smith.

PICTURED: Vaughan (left) with Smith

Terry Smith statement
28 September 2001
by Garry Cook

Outgoing Chester chairman Terry Smith finally did what no Chester fan ever thought he would – apologise.

Smith issued a statement after wrapping up the sale of the club to Stephen Vaughan admitting “The buck stops with me.”

He wished Vaughan success with the club that he guided for two years and said: “At least I have given Chester City Football Club the opportunity to fight another day, and that is better for the supporters than having no club at all.

“I accept the complete blame for this failure but at least I was able to bridge the gap between what would have been definite liquidation and a bright future.

“There will be many memories that I will one day be able to cherish. I thank everyone in Chester whose thoughtful kindness and friendship brought about these fond memories for me.

“I will be waiting everyday for moment that I will be able to sleep soundly and feel good again when I read Steve has led you back into the Football League. I know he will.”

But far from retiring from football, Smith has spent last week trying to launch a bizarre ‘World Football Scouting Bureau.’

Using the Chester City logo to promote the venture, Smith was last week promising young players the chance of professional careers in England, Wales, Scotland, American and Europe by attending ‘Evaluation Camps.’

The camps, due to be held in the Midlands and North-west yesterday and today promised that ‘all players will be measured and evaluated on athletic ability, playing ability, intelligence tests and tactical knowledge.’

One Chester fan contacted the Bureau and got through to Smith, but the American denied any involvement with the project.

Ends.

Arsenal were once a big side

Arsene Wenger's Arsenal.

They were once the most athletic side in the Premier League. They won league titles, refused to let the opposition out-muscle them and displayed skill levels rarely seen in Britain.

Somewhere along the way the Gunners have, quite literally, lost their big players - those six-footers who added power to the side's undoubted skill.

Now Wenger, still the second-best manager of his generation after Sir Alex Ferguson, presides over a side of incredibly skillful dwarves - pleasing on the eye but dismissively brushed aside like a piece of fluff on a Barbour jacket.

Without Wenger I'm sure Arsenal would be in a far worse position than they are now. He's managed the side admirably on a far tighter budget than Manchester United, Chelsea and now Manchester City.

But the man who pioneered the acquisition of the incredible black (often African) athletes into the English Premier League, a formula which Harry Redknapp copied to FA Cup-winning success at Portsmouth, somewhere along the way misplaced his winning formula.

I could watch Andrei Arshavin, Samir Nasri, Theo Walcott and Cesc Fabregas all day.

But without players in the mould of Thierry Henry, Sol Campbell (previous version), Edu, Patrick Vieira (very previous version), Gilberto Silva alongside them, they could play all day and not win any matches.

Even sub-six-footers Kolo Toure and Lauren would be a help.

By the way, Wenger also needs a world class keeper.