The team, the fans and the board were very happy but very nervous too: Chester City was beginning the Coca-Cola Championship season hoping to avoid relegation but fearing that it couldn’t do more than one of the last three places in the table. There was another thing that was keeping us on our toes, a negative financial balance.
Well, I won’t go around talking no more, here are the results we managed to pull out in the first half of the season.
Eight wins, 7 draws and 9 defeats in Coca-Cola Championship. Not too bad, but not too good either. The first 9 games were a complete nightmare: one win, one draw and 7 games lost. After losing 6 games in a row I amit I was quite desperate, although the team was not playing bad at all. I’ll give you just a couple of examples of lost games, against Burney and Hull.
As you can see we dominated both games but we lost. Our team was paying the lack of experience, that was the only explanation I could find. In the meantime I was getting an offer to quit Chester and join Milwall, also in Coca-Cola Championship, but a much richer club. I declined the offer.
There were ups and downs, bad defeats and glorious wins in this half of the season. One of the most beautiful wins was at home over Stoke, one of the best teams in the league.
At the end of the year we were outside the red hot last three places in the table, but we were not too far away.
Ironically, the best players were the ones that accomplished the first Chester miracle, back in 2009-2010 in League Two: defender James Chester, midfielder Rodrigo Possebon and striker Federico Almerares. I hope that the rest of the team will grow in the second half of the season and that they will prove that we deserved to be in Coca-Cola Championship.
