Chirita help please

I kept thinking that i was over watering this chirita that I bought at an av sale this summer....when I just tried to take it out of the pot, I had to let it soak in warm water for a couple of hours.....the root system was in such a tight ball that no water could even get to it............now look at this picture after taking the sucker plucker and literally breaking it all down............the neck is long......the stem you can see on the bottom of the picture and I have already cut off some of the stem.....

I will wait until someone comes along who knows what to do.............I am tempted to cut the long neck and reroot again the crown of the plant in a big corsage box in the regular mix I use for avs......

Can I make any use out of the rest of that thick stem (the extension of the neck waaaay down in the original soil)

If the bottom leaves look good, you can just pot that plant as is and bury any bare stem up to the crown. If the bottom leaves look bad, take them off and just do the same thing by potting and covering any bare stem (neck). New roots will form no problem.

fantastic.....thanks
the bottom leaves look great....