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Darlington sack manager and players


manc_don

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/16584216.stm

 

Darlington's administrators have terminated the contracts of the club's interim manager Craig Liddle and the remaining playing staff.

 

The move puts Saturday's home game with Fleetwood in doubt, with the Football Conference setting a deadline of Wednesday to decide if it goes ahead.

 

In a statement, administrator Harvey Madden said there was "no alternative" given the club's financial position.

 

He also said that, despite interest, no formal takeover bids had been received.

 

The statement read: "Given the current financial position of the club and, as a consequence of my legal obligations, I have had no alternative but to terminate the contracts of all playing staff and the retained administration staff.

 

"Notwithstanding this, there remain parties interested in either injecting funds into the club to enable it to continue operating or acquiring the club.

 

"Every effort is being made to progress this to try to save the club. However, at this stage I have still not received any formal offers and unless a deal is concluded as a matter of urgency, time will have run out for Darlington Football Club."

 

Players Ian Miller, Sam Russell, Liam Hatch and Jamie Chandler all left the club prior to the announcement, although several senior professionals have been affected.

 

"To say I feel sick is an understatement," said Marc Bridge-Wilkinson on his Twitter account, while team-mate Paul Arnison admitted his frustrations at being made redundant and Aaron Brown expressed surprise at being asked to train for the Fleetwood game.

 

Adam Rundle, who was one of the players to have accepted reduced payments to ensure the club fulfilled the fixture at Barrow earlier this month, was equally disappointed.

 

"Not a good day if you're a player - even got taxed on the £200 we were offered for the Barrow game, [i am] hoping Darlo survive though, looks promising," Rundle said on his social networking account.

 

Former chairman Raj Singh placed the club in administration earlier this month, but as the major creditor said he would not demand his investment back if a buyer could be found.

 

Since that time the club has cut costs by initially reducing the off-field staff, while players who had not been paid handed in their notice and left the club.

 

Administrators then handed Darlington a stay of execution on Friday when their future looked bleak, although negotiations now appear to have stalled.

 

Meanwhile Liddle has revealed he will continue to work with the youth team for free with the funding for the side guaranteed by the Football League until the end of the season.

 

The 40-year-old has represented the club as both player and coach, and had previously combined running first-team affairs with a head of youth development role.

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To be honest, I worry that we're quite similar. Did their chairman make a point of building a stadium which was too big and in the middle of no-where? Obviously I hope thats not the case with our situation.

 

Too Big (Feethams capacity on closing was 8500, new stadium was 25000), Middle of nowhere, Insufficient road infrastructure & parking which restricted its capacity to 10,000, Old chairmen was actually quoted as saying the council were partly to blame for the clubs financial demise because they refused to let the stadium be used for such things as car-boot sales, ticket prices went up which coupled with sunderland, newcaslte and Middlesborough maintaining premiership/ championship football whilst darlington went out of the league meant the fans just drifted away.

 

At least out stadium will have roughly the same capacity and the nearest 'biggish' clubs to aberdeen are just as shite as we are

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Reynolds was a crook whose vanity has destroyed a 130 year old football club. Anyone remember the bulshitting from him about being able to have built the new Wembley for £30k and the video of his wife telling supporters to fuck off at one of the AGM's.

 

Shit stadium too, made/makes the mainer seem spacious.

 

Feel for the supporters especially as they were rescued from the Reynolds nightmare by another moron who thought his money made him bright enough to out-think actual football folk.

 

Suppose they are big enough to be back in another form at some point though.

 

 

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