From bad to worse, to oblivion for Chesterfield F.C.?

Chesterfield’s inexorable slide continued with yet another one all draw this time away at Eastleigh, a good result on the day, but one where our lack of firepower now sees us in the bottom 4 of the National League. Another one-all draw at home to London suburb Bromley didn't improve things much either. Now we hear that Tomlinsons, the club's sponsors, are pulling out, things are dire, on and off the pitch.

Compare and contrast our fortunes with those of Wigan Athletic if you will, a team from a similar sized town to Chesterfield, yet one which has to compete for support with Rugby League. Wigan did not even get into the league until the 1980s and after that, rattled around in the lower tier until local businessman Dave Whelan came along in 1995 and bought the club, built a new stadium, and won 3 promotions in 10 years to take them into the Premier League and an FA Cup final victory. 

Whelan has just sold the Latics to a Hong Kong based firm International Entertainment Corporation for £22 million. Wigan currently sit 17^th in the Championship, just above Rotherham and Sheffield Wednesday. 

The Press gantry  at Eastleigh

Their manager is a bloke called Paul Cook and their main midfielder, is one Sam Morsy.

In an almost mirror image of Wigan is Chesterfield, also owned by a local businessman called Dave who sends packing potential suitors, from China, Sweden and closer to home, by declaring that they are tyre-kickers and time wasters.

Roberto Martinez who managed Wigan to their greatest ever triumph at Wembley was recently quoted as saying “Dave Whelan is, the reason that Wigan achieved what they achieved. He had an incredible vision, he was a winner and everything he did was done properly and that was contagious.” Our Great Leader avowed that his vision was to “Get the club into the championship and flog it.” Perhaps he could take a tip from Dave Whelan on how this can now be achieved; although to be fair we do have a contagious culture at the club, but one which involves a rather more downward trajectory than we’d hoped for.

At the time of writing, time must be running out for Martin Allen, upbeat in press conferences and very proud of our unbeaten run, which is also a non-winning league run of 18 games. Allen was actually previously sacked at Saturday’s opponents Eastleigh after not winning for 7 matches and guiding them to 15^th place in the National League a spot which would now be regarded as success by most Spireites. 

Eastleigh was an awful wet afternoon, somewhere in Hampshire the supporters bus arrived 5 minutes before kick off. I was filming for the club website and had to climb up a scaffold in the rain set up the camera and get the best pictures I could manage. With rain on the lens and on my glasses I am surprised I got anything on camera at all.

I recently had the misfortune to drive past The Darlington Arena which used to be home to the local football team, who now don’t play there anymore but first ground shared with Bishop Aukland and are now at a much smaller ground in the vicinity, their fans recently clubbed together to make new improvements to the ground. 

Darlo now sit 16^th in the National League north, 2 places below Alfreton, frankly we have more chance of ending up like them than Wigan. Here we go, we could end up a fan owned club desperately looking for someone to buy Chesterfield FC, same thing as happened when Darren Brown took over and ruined the club. Or maybe the club will just be run into the ground and never sold? Ashley Carson wants to know who threw a bottle onto the pitch at the last home game, probably someone who wasn't very pleased with the rubbish they paid to watch.