IT WOULD take a long drawn-out process if former Reds chairman Eric Whalley was to return to the helm at Accrington Stanley.

Whalley’s return is a rumour which has been circulating since it was revealed this week he is no longer Chester’s City’s Director of Football following a takeover at the troubled Blue Square Premier League club.

Whalley, who was in charge of the Reds from 1995-2009, is still believed to hold 51 per cent of shares in Stanley after his deal to sell them to the club’s current Managing Director Dave O’Neill has never officially gone through.

And while Whalley has made no sounds about returning to the Crown Ground and was unavailable for comment as the Observer went to press, it has prompted speculation that he could walk back into the club he took from non league obscurity into the Football League but left last year with debts of hundreds of thousands of pounds and a winding up order.

Stanley’s non executive chairman Ilyas Khan, who paid the majority of the £308,000 tax debt in November to stop the club being wound up and has made further financial contributions to keep the club afloat, said: "If Mr Whalley was minded to come back, then he would have to go through a due process which would take an amount of time.

"He isn’t a director at the football club so to exercise any control he would have to return as a director and for that, he would have to call a shareholders meeting and be voted in.

"He does own 51 per cent of the shares so he could do that but then there is the existing board of directors of me, Peter Marsden and Dave O’Neill who he would have work with or fire. It would be a long drawn out process and it is probably down to whether Mr Whalley wants to go down this road.

"I have had no indication that he wants to come back to Accrington."

Manager John Coleman, who Whalley appointed to take over at the Reds in 1999 said about the possibility of his former chairman returning; "Nothing surprises me in football anymore."