The great Chester soap opera

Smith used American football techniques in training

BBC Sport Online's Andrew Warshaw reports on the latest crisis to rock Chester City.

The chairman has left home and is nowhere to be found. The managing director is not contactable either and the staff are worried about being paid.

In other words, just another normal day for Chester City in what has become one of English football's most bizarre soap operas.

Except that this time, the new season is just around the corner.

As the troubled Nationwide Conference club lurches from crisis to crisis, rumours and counter-rumours abound.

Has a new buyer been found to replace the maverick American Terry Smith?

Conversely, will Chester be able to fulfill their opening league fixture of the season on Saturday at home to Woking?

I'm totally in the dark and quite frankly, I'm punch-drunk with it all

Chester secretary Mike Fair

As usual, more questions than answers.

"I'm totally in the dark and quite frankly I'm almost punch-drunk with it all," said Chester secretary Mike Fair who has seen a succession of managers come and go.

"All I want is some clarification about the future."

At the centre of all the unrest is Smith, a former American football player and coach.

Ever since he strode into the club two years ago in a blaze of publicity insisting he had saved Chester from liquidation, Smith has proved the consummate self-publicist.

He promised first division football within three years but instead hired and fired a string of managers.

He insisted on using American football techniques for getting the best out of his players and threatened to dismiss anyone who questioned his surreal way of running the club.

The result was that Chester inevitably were relegated to the Conference.

Rambling release

Last week, Smith issued an unsigned and rambling press release defending his role and attacking his critics.

He promised a new buyer would be in place by end of Wednesday night. It was another empty boast. No such buyer ever appeared.

Now Smith has disappeared from the scene, leaving his house empty.

So has managing director Gareth Evans who is still mourning the death of his only son and whose involvement with the club is unknown.

Fair, one of the only administrators left of the Smith regime, confirmed that former Manchester United winger Gordon Hill was still director of football.

But that was about the only certainty.

"There is so much speculation that we can do without," Fair said. "I don't know where Terry is. I feel I have been left in the dark."

Along with just about every other Chester fan.

Now comes the crunch. Four days before the Woking game, Chester's players and staff are due to be paid.

But will Terry Smith sign the cheques?

"It's obviously the acid test," said Fair. "If there is to be a change of ownership, that is a crucial date. The last thing you do is not pay your players."