Search: ' Mark Guterman'

As Mark Griffiths reports, the bleak situation at Wrexham is slipping further downhill and threatening to snowball

It is a misplaced notion that all troubled teams find a knight in shining armour and scrape through: Wrexham are in serious danger of oblivion. Set to go into administration on December 3, they aren’t merely, like some other clubs that have taken that step, the victims of financial mismanagement: they have an owner whose interests would appear to be best served by the club disappearing. The situation reported in WSC 212 has worsened considerably. Then it seemed majority shareholder Alex Hamilton hoped to profit from relocating the club and selling the land the Racecourse Ground occupies. It now appears that such activity was merely a smokescreen. Next July Wrexham will have to leave their stadium, home since 1873, having been served notice of eviction by Hamilton. By then their assets might well have all gone: transactions have been taking place without directors’ knowledge; managing director John Reames’s attempt to warn fans of what was going on led to club officials being ordered to rip the offending page out of the programme.

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Tom Davies reports on three of the Football League's troubled clubs

The fight to secure the future of Wrexham at the Racecourse Ground (reported in WSC 208) has acquired a new urgency over the summer. Elusive chairman Mark Guterman has left the club, leaving the abrasive Alex Hamilton in charge. Hamilton, now revealed as the real power behind Guterman from the start, wants to sell the ground (which could fetch up to £25 million) and move the club to an out-of-town site, claiming that the sale would be the only way to stave off the lingering threat of administration and clear debts of around £5m.

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Tom Davies looks at a batch of clubs in crisis

The future of Telford United is in serious doubt following the collapse of chairman Andy Shaw’s business empire. The Conference club were forced into receivership in March along with Shaw’s other main companies, Miras Contracts and Whitehouse Hotels. A players’ wage deferral and some short-term funding from the remaining directors saw the club through to the end of the season but unless the future of their recently modernised Bucks Head stadium can be secured, neither can that of the club.

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Chester City fans celebrated the arrival of Terry Smith, who took over the club last year. They are not celebrating now, says Mark Howell

Terry Smith, the 40-year-old former coach of Manchester Spartans American Football team, took control of Chester City in July 1999. Asked to explain his interest, Smith cited his children’s love of Chester Zoo and the fact that “Americans love history, and Chester is steep­ed in history”. Supporters celebrated nonetheless. They had raised over £100,000 to­­­wards Smith’s takeover and were set to own over 30 per cent of the club, which had been in administration for almost a year.

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Mark Howell on his boyhood club as they face an uphill task to survive

My home town team is Chester City. In their 113-year history they have been to the semi-finals of the League Cup, won promotion three times and won the Debenhams Cup once. That is it. We are one of those teams who have never played at Wembley. We are also two months or so away from extinction.

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