I wanted to bring people up to date with my situations, as I have now left Chester City.

I felt it would be a difficult situation to remain at the club after the change of circumstances, although I must stress that Mark Wright had wanted me to stay on in a coaching capacity and didn’t want me to leave.

I have enjoyed my time at Chester, I have really enjoyed working with the players and the fans have been absolutely fantastic.

I also want to thank the Chairman for providing me with a fantastic management opportunity and now I am looking forward to progressing my career elsewhere.

I would like to wish Mark Wright and Steve Bleasdale all the best for the rest of the season.

I will now go back to continuing my studies at university, which I have neglected over the past few months, while I seek further management opportunities.

I was as shocked as anyone to hear the news of Simon’s departure. It came as a complete surprise especially with games coming up against Morecambe and Aldershot, games which I think we can win at home.

Simon is a great bloke and a very good coach. We had an excellent working relationship, one which I hope we can renew again in the future. I firmly believe he will go on to be a successful Manager and hopefully he will be back in the game very soon.

I felt it was a difficult time for him, with Chester’s limited resources and the Club in the transfer embargo which prevented him bringing any new faces in, which could have freshened things up, made a real impact and probably got us out of the position we are in.

So to say it is hugely disappointing is an understatement.

I have spoken to the club and I was asked to be Caretaker Manager for the Morecambe game. I will be taking training and preparing the players for the game.

I also had a long chat with Simon about my position. He bought me to the club, which I am extremely grateful for and now I have his full backing which is very important to me.

I would like to state that I am not going to be putting my name forward for the vacant Managers job.

I feel that at this time in my career I want to continue my development as a coach and have more experience as an Assistant Manager, which will hopefully stand me in good stead for the future, when hopefully I will be a Manager.

First of all I better apologise for a lack of updates. It’s been a busy few weeks, the games have been coming thick and fast and there has been a lot of planning to do.

I am beginning to realise now why managers age so quickly, there is always something going on and something to do, be it watch dvd’s, go to games, plan training sessions or write reports on the opposition.

Throw into the equation getting myself back to full fitness, so I am available for selection you can see why it’s been so manic!

I would just like to set the record straight about me signing on as a player for Chester. I may have just celebrated a big birthday but I never retired. I have read a few stories about the Manager persuading me to come out of retirement, but I always hoped that I would get another chance to play.

I always wanted the decision to finish playing to be mine, not forced upon me by any managers. I am still feeling good and I know I can do a job if needed.

It’s been a while since my last game but I have been joining in training and I am getting closer to full fitness, so if needed I will soon be ready to hopefully help out Chester City.

Everything has been agreed at Chester now and I have signed a two year contract, which I am delighted about. I am under no illusions how much more work there is than playing but I have to admit that the long days have taken a bit of adjusting too!!

As a player you just turn up, train, go home and get yourself ready for the match at the weekend but there is a lot more to it than that for me now. There is lot of preparation is involved, a lot of homework needs to be done such as dealing with scouting reports, watching DVD’s of opponents and the preparation that is involved in any game takes up to a week before hand, if not longer.

Saturday’s trip to Grimsby is going to be another tough one. They have had an indifferent start but they are a decent team who love to pass it, which should suit us. We are away from home though but we know we need to pick up points away from home as well and I think it is going to be a decent football match.

To bring you up to date negotiations have begun with Chester about the possibility of me becoming Assistant Manager on a permanent basis. Nothing has been confirmed yet but hopefully during the week I will put pen to paper on a deal to stay here.

It has been hard work so far but very very rewarding. We have improved a lot since the first game I was involved in, against Rotherham. That was a tough game and we got beat but since then we have had a resounding win against Barnet at home and then secured a good point against high flying Bury on Saturday.

The atmosphere has always been good , in the squad, because the players always believed that they were going to win games and get up the league but getting points on the board and kick-starting the season was always going to be a relief, the lads have worked incredibly hard and long may it continue.

I find it amazing that today’s game with Barnet is being dubbed as a potential six pointer so early in the season.

It is only a must win because we want to kick start the season and get points on the board and I am sure Barnet feel exactly the same. We go into it though on the back of a good week of training, the players have all worked very hard and are desperate to put the last few results behind them and kick on, hopefully that will start this afternoon.

As for my own situation it is still very much up in the air. I would love to stay because it has been a really enjoyable education and experience so far but I am also a realist and know that results dictate situations.

I’ve been at Chester for two weeks now and I have really enjoyed it.

Rotherham was a really tough game, we prepared the players very well and training went well before the game but the lads didn’t show, in the first half, what we had seen from them in training and gave themselves too much to do.

When you look back at the goals, some of them, the second in particular was just really bad luck and the sort of goal you only concede when you are at the wrong end of the table and things really aren’t going your way.

But we changed things at half time, we created a few chances and restricted them to very few so we have to take positives from the game and there were a lot to take, despite going down to a very good Rotherham side.

Regardless of how things have gone the lads have been upbeat this week, we have had a good week of training and I think everyone is confident of getting that first win against Barnet, we scored our first goal last week which was important and know that on another day we could have had more.

There has been a lot of negativity around, outside the club, but we are only three league games into the season and one of 10 teams up and down the country who are yet to pick up a point. There are three others in our division in the same boat while three others would give their right arms to swap points with us!

When we lost to Leeds the reports were less than complimentary, after all Leeds are on paper only one division higher but when you look at their result from the Carling Cup Second Round it doesn’t seem so bad after all. Leeds scored four against Championship side Crystal Palace with Neil Warnock admitting “Quite honestly we couldn’t cope with the front lads.”

We need to get things into perspective right now and I have seen enough from the players at Chester and from the work me and Simon Davies have put in that a result is not far away.

Negativity is a massive bugbear of mine; it doesn’t achieve anything or change anything. The important thing when teams are going through a tough spell is to stick together.

We obviously want to win every game just as everyone else does. We prepare and set the team up to go out and win every game but we also have to be realistic and know that that is not always going to happen but we have to make sure the players give everything and go into games with all the knowledge we can give them.