A saga of budget overruns on the stadium, a boardroom walkout and a run of unsuccessful managerial appointments has seen the Spireites relegated

In the rain at Chesterfield’s Proact Stadium on Saturday, home supporters still stunned by the club’s first relegation from the Football League sat mostly in glum resignation, watching Wycombe win 2-1 and deliriously celebrate promotion all over the pitch.

Wycombe’s manager, Gareth Ainsworth, broke for a moment from his players’ jubilation, their gleeful calls for the board to “send us to Vegas”, and expressed sympathy for the Spireites: “It’s very sad,” he said. “You stand in this stadium and the thought that this club is going to be in the National League next year is frightening. It’s got to be a real wake-up call for all clubs; it can happen to anyone. This is a huge club with a huge history.”

Burton put reality check on hold in bid for Championship miracle Read more

Relegation was never in the brochure when Chesterfield boldly moved in 2010 from Saltergate, their atmospheric home since 1871, and took aim for the Championship in their new 10,000-seat stadium.

Founder members of the Third Division (North) in 1921 and solidly in the Football League throughout the 97 years since, Chesterfield overcame a crisis in 2001 caused by Darren Brown, then 29, who was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison for fraudulent trading. The supporters trust, the CFSS, took over a club in financial ruins, had to put it into administration, then passed its running to four wealthy local supporters who steered it back to solvency .

Needing millions to bridge the gap between selling Saltergate and building the new stadium, in 2009 the shareholders ceded majority ownership to Dave Allen, the Sheffield casino owner, as did the CFSS, which had formed a community-centred vision for the future termed “the club’s the hub”.

The fruits of that approach, The Hub, excellent facilities built into the stadium’s east stand in which the Chesterfield FC Community Trust, a registered charity, runs school and social inclusion projects and programmes for people with disabilities, shone on Saturday like a beacon in the gloom. To Chesterfield’s proud history as the world’s fourth oldest professional club, formed in 1866, can be added a modern distinction, as the originators of walking football, the ambulant form of the game drawing in crowds of mostly senior citizens nationwide.

How all this progress stumbled as low as dropping out of the EFL is a dismal saga of budget overruns on the stadium, a boardroom walkout by Allen and latterly a run of unsuccessful managerial appointments. Allen, an archetype of a blunt-talking Yorkshireman who previously ran Sheffield Wednesday in a difficult period financially, became disillusioned after the initial £4m he was asked to provide for the stadium steadily increased.

Sign up to The Recap, our weekly email of editors’ picks.

“I only went in to invest money; my ambition was to get into the Championship and flog it,” he said. “But they wanted more money within months. I’ve put a hell of a lot of money in. I’m very sad and I also feel very bitter.”

Chesterfield’s latest accounts show Allen having loaned almost £6m on top of his initial £4m investment for 80% of the shares, and he continues to fund heavy losses for a club relegated with a £2m wage bill, League Two’s sixth highest.

Promoted in 2014 under Paul Cook’s shrewd management, Chesterfield made the play-off semi-final for promotion to the Championship as recently as three years ago but lost to Preston, then Cook took up an offer to manage Portsmouth. Chesterfield sold players, including Sam Clucas to Hull City for £1.3m, in an effort to balance the books, but Allen said he agrees with many at the club that the subsequent departure of Paul Mitchell, who headed player recruitment under Cook, was a severe loss.

Allen’s disenchantment escalated in November 2016, when he asked the other directors to set aside repayment of their own loans and waive interest. Some at the club say the directors were prepared to do that except for one loan from a director’s company; Allen responds that “collectively” they did not agree. He immediately resigned from the board, and has barely been to the stadium since.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chesterfield fans at their recent match against Forest Green. Photograph: Shane Healey/ProSports/Rex/Shutterstock

The other directors soon also resigned, leaving only the long-serving Mike Warner as the chairman, John Croot, the chief executive of the community trust, and Allen’s long-term associate, Ashley Carson, on the board.

Carson holds the historic position in Sheffield of assay master, the silver hallmarking authority, but at Chesterfield, following the disappointments of relegation back to League Two in 2016 and four managers since Cook, he has been the focus of criticism. At the Wycombe defeat, there were calls of “We want Carson out” from a group of supporters who mustered a protest.

Blackburn’s Mowbray out to crack Venky’s puzzle with passage to India | David Conn Read more

Allen insists he is standing by Carson: “He is a good, straight businessman; I’ve known him a long time. I don’t think the bad decisions were down to him. I am going to take a more active part now in trying to put things right, and we need to appoint the right manager to bounce back up again.”

Ian Evatt, the captain appointed as caretaker after last week’s departure as manager of former striker Jack Lester, said on Saturday: “For this club to be out of the Football League is an absolute travesty. Personally I’m devastated.”

Evatt’s view was that the players themselves must face responsibility: “Football is sometimes about self-analysing, about going home, looking in the mirror and asking yourself: ‘Have I done enough for this football club?’ Clearly the answer is no, and I’m included in that.

“You can blame all the people you want to blame, you can blame off the pitch, but when it comes down to it, the players on the pitch have not been good enough this season. Simple as that.”