Paul Doswell believes Chester have paid the price for their summer overspend which has led to the club falling into financial turmoil.

The Sutton United boss – who oversaw a 3-2 win over Chester on Saturday - feels the off-field situation at the Deva was always going to manifest given the vastly increased wage budget, far beyond the Blues means, which has resulted in Blues fans raising over £100,000 to bail out the club and prevent a second insolvency in eight years.

While Chester are now set to remain a football club, relegation into National League North is now almost certain, in stark contrast to Doswell’s Sutton, who top the table and could secure a shock promotion into the Football League.

The U’s secured a major financial windfall last season due to their FA Cup run, but rather than blow the cash on an over-inflated playing squad, Doswell used the money to gradually keep improving the community club both on and off the pitch.

"We know what players get paid in this league and we know the quality of player that Chester had, and ultimately they were running on a wage bill they couldn't afford and that continued for too long,” Doswell said.

"They had a ridiculous amount of backroom staff and that isn't what we have got here. If you look around it is myself, the assistant manager who doesn't get paid and the kit man who doesn't get paid. We still treat ourselves as a non-league club and have that mentality.

"You get yourself in trouble in the main if you spend more than you have got, and that includes plenty of other teams in our league by the way.

“It’s the same as Dagenham, they had 32 players signed up at the start of this season. Know what your cash flow is and work out what your budget must be.

“The reality is here, the punishment for going up is we must find close to £600,000 for the pitch which we currently haven’t got. We’ll have some money coming in from the Football League, we’ll need to raise some by other means, but we will get there if it comes to it.

"What you have seen here is we have invested in new floodlights, new tea bars to generate income and we are going to re-do the bar. We did allow the squad to go from 18 to 20 this year but even then we have allowed three or four to go back out on loan to get the money back in. Even now we make sure we don't go over what we can afford."

Doswell feels Sutton ‘don’t get the respect’ they deserve but is happy to go under the radar compared to bigger clubs in the title race.

“Everyone talks about Tranmere and Wrexham, but we’re a part-time club top of this league and nobody even mentions us, which to a certain extent you can say that it fine,” he continued.

“The reality is when you turn on the TV you still only see four or five clubs on BT, and you pick the Non-League Paper up and still see the same old teams.

“You know that people view us as a poxy little club. We are not that anymore and have worked hard to make sure we are not.

“But we don't get any respect, and we don't get any respect from opposition managers in the main either. We don't get the respect we deserve.”

On their 3-2 success over Marcus Bignot’s side, he added: “I thought we were very comfortable for long periods, especially at 2-0 and 3-1.

“Mr Allison did his usual trick of making a controversial decision at the end which gave Chester a really good last 10 minutes to try and get something out of the game.

“Credit to Chester, they kept going but we’d missed two or three unbelievable chances to put the game out of reach.

“Chester’s players in generally fought very hard for the cause and I wish them all the best for next season.”