By Nathan Jackson
April 10 2008

Here is our statistical lowdown on Chester City ahead of Lincoln City's away game at the Saunders Hondas Stadium, the stats would tend to suggest an away victory when you take into account that the hosts have only avoided defeat 8 times in the last 28 games.

Chester City are in their fourth season back in the Football League and this is the third time in those four that they are struggling against relegation. This season's collapse is a near replica of the one they had in the 05/06 in the sense that they've gone from the top to near the drop.

After their extremely fortunate win at Sincil Bank they maintained their record of being the best side away from home at that point. It's been 28 games since Chester City left Sincil Bank on 28 points, in that time they have gained just 16 points and it is little surprise that they've fallen down the table. Those 15 points have come from 4 wins, 4 draws and a whopping 20 defeats.

Chester have the second worst home record in the division. They gain an average of 0.9 points in a home game, only Mansfield have a worse record at home, gaining 0.85 points on average per home game. It hardly comes as any surprise that Chester are the worst side at home in the division based on the last 5 games,  picking up 1 win and 4 defeats from those games.

Chester have an average record against teams in the bottom half of the table. Out of the 19 games against 13^th-24^th they've won 7, drawn 6 and lost 6.

Chester have conceded the first goal 27 times but to their credit have won 4 of those games and drawn 4 more, not a shabby record. They've scored first on 13 occasions but have thrown away a lead 5 times, losing twice and drawing three times. If Chester fail to score then they often lose, they've lost 15 of the 16 games in which they've failed to score.

Former Imp Kevin Ellison is Chester's leading goalscorer with 11 goals. Murphy has 9 and Partridge has 9. Two more former Imps have scored for Chester this season, Simon Yeo and Kevin Sandwith. Chester have a reputation of having former City players amongst their squad. They've had quite a few ex-City players since they returned to League 2 in 2004 and they are Justin Walker, Marcus Richardson, Derek Asamoah, Luke Dimech (former City youth player) and Ryan Semple.

Since returning to the League their overall League record reads : Played 180

Won 51 Drawn 60 Lost 78. This will be the fourth season in four where they have lost more games than they've won. They also can't be safe even if they beat the Imps on Saturday. A win would at maximum move them 9 points clear of Mansfield Town with 9 to play for.

Their starting 11 against Chester was: Danby, Roberts, Butler, Linwood, Wilson, Partridge, Sandwith, Hughes, Rutherford, Murphy and Ellison.