Chester chairman David Harrington-Wright says the club ‘owe it to the supporters’ to consider their options as the search for a new manager continues.

The Blues had hoped to agree terms with their preferred candidate, understood to be Neil Redfearn, earlier this week, but the deal has stalled over financials with Chester now looking at other alternatives should their final offer not be accepted by the former Leeds United manager.

It is understood Marcus Bignot's successor will not be appointed before the start of next week, with potential candidates invited for talks over the coming days.

Harrington-Wright, Chester’s third chairman since the turn of the year, admitted he was disappointed a deal hadn’t been concluded with their number one target but insisted the club would not be held to ransom over any financial package.

“We owe it to the fans to have a Plan B in place at this stage,” Harrington-Wright said.

“I was hoping it would be concluded by now but look, that’s the way it goes in football sometimes and we’ll remain diligent.

“People have certain requirements in any business and that comes down to finances, but we owe it to our supporters, our owners, to get on with it if we can’t come to an agreement with our preferred candidate.

“We cannot go into next season under the same sort of financial pressure that we went into last season. Of course, the board accepts other pressures, and there’s pressure on the team to perform and results to be better, but financially we owe it to everyone to make sure we’re not agreeing to any demands that we cannot meet. If we have these worries in September/October, we’d know we’d have done the wrong thing by the club and the supporters.

“If Plan A comes off, then fantastic. If it doesn’t then we’ve got plans in place. We’re being as robust as we can be.

“At the end of the day, we’ve drawn a line in the sand and asked, ‘can you do it?’ If not, we’ll move on.”