Welcome back everybody, I hope you all had a great close season. And that you are all looking forward to another assault on “the quad”.
This season I’ve decided to change things around slightly. Some of the new segments are listed below, but the ones that are not will be put in periodically and they are as follows…Route’s to Cup Finals… Profile on a past Manager…A look at players who “tried’ but never made it…Once again if anyone has any suggestions as to other segments I would be most grateful, If there’s some segments you don’t like or if there’s any from last season you would like to see back, again please let me know. As for the fixtures, I’m taking the list from when they first come out, so if some fixtures and dates don’t coincide blame the FA for changing them, not me. (Lol)

So our first game is against a promoted side, and we have a good shot at taking our unbeaten home run to 64 games, which will be a new Top Division record.

Chelsea Vs Birmingham City
Good Days and Bad Games

24th Aug 77: W 2-0..Goalscorers: Stanley,Lewington
17th Dec 49: W 3-0..Goalscorers: J Harris, Bentley,Campbell
05th Sept 73: W 3-1...Goalscorers:Hollins, Kember, Hutchinson
16th Sept 59: W 4-2..Goalscorers: Greaves 3, Blunstone
31st Aug 57: W 5-1...Goalscorers: Brabrook, Allen, Greaves 2, Lewis

05 Sept 36: L 1-3..Goalscorer: Mills
02 Nov 63: L 2-3 Goalscorer: Moore2

A Team of Top appearance makers Vs Birmingham City
V Woodley 14,G Locke 9, R Harris 15,J Hollins 8,A Craig 9,J Mortimore 8,F Blunstone,12,J Greaves 8, E Gudjohnsen 8,D Spence 10, P Brabrook 11

Unsung Hero: This week’s unsung just falls into what this category is about.(under 200 games).His Name is Carlo Cudicni.Carlo was bought to Chelsea mainly as cover for  Ed De Goey in Aug 99 for a bargain 160,000GBP.He didn’t really get much opportunity to play regularly until 2001,when he became the undisputed #1.He soon endeared himself to the Chelsea faithful with some very impressive saves. He was also a great penalty saver and I think (correct me if I’m wrong) he has saved 50% of the penalties he has faced. Two of Carlo’s most impressive stats are, keeping a clean sheet for 14 hours & 24 minutes in Oct & Nov 03 and he did not concede a goal in any of our five Champions League away games that same season. The Lazio away game was for me his greatest performance. Unfortunately for Carlo all the winners medals he has got are as a non playing sub and the only final he has played in was the FA Cup Final of 2002,but I bet that even though he has only played 13 times in the League under Jose Mourinho there are a whole host of Premier League teams that would love to have him as their starting #1.As of the start of this season Carlo has played 188 games as a starter and has made 5 sub appearances, he has also kept 88 clean sheets.

Flashback: It’s the 1972-73 season and our first game of the season was at a three sided Stamford Bridge Stadium. Yes the East stand was now a building site. Our first match was against our big enemy Leeds Utd.A massive crowd of 51,102(remember it was 3 sided) saw Chelsea knock the Stuffing out of a Leeds side who were intent on winning the old first division. With 8 players from the cup winning team a few seasons before. Chelsea thrashed Leeds 4-0, with goals from Garland 2, Osgood, Cooke.But our season wasn’t going to be as eventful as that summers day in early August. We couldn’t get any sort of winning run together, our best sequence being from late Sept thru to late Oct with us winning 4 and drawing 2 in 6 games. We did lose Peter Bonetti for a good sized chuck of the season, with Phillips and Sherwood deputizing, but in the 15 games Bonetti was out we only won twice .We did have a run going at the end of the season winning the last 3 games, but that was on the back of 5 straight defeats. We did have a couple of decent cup runs, in the Fa Cup win went out to Arsenal in a 6th round replay. In the League cup we got to the semi finals but lost both legs to Norwich City .We ended the season in a mediocre 12th place. Chris Garland & Ossie were our top goalscorers with 11 a piece in the league. Ron Harris & John Hollins were ever presents this season, with Peter Osgood winning the player of the year.

A To Z of Chelsea Fc
 F: Farcical: On a very wet Tuesday night and With Chelsea leading Man City 4-1(league cup 4th round) Pat Nevin came up to take probably one of the worst penalties ever. Admittedly the pitch was very heavy as it had had a lot of rain on it but that still wasn’t a valid excuse.Nevin ran up and ‘side’ footed the ball towards the goal, the ball travel no more than 8 yards, the goalkeeper just looked at it and at Nevin and went and picked it up, Nevin just stood there and all the players were very amused by it as were the 26,364 fans. He never took another penalty after that.

S: Smallest Attendance: Our smallest ever attendances (post war) are pretty dismal, our worst league Att  is  Vs Orient 5th may 82 when 6,009 turned up, we did manage to get one lower than that, and that was in the full members cup Vs Plymouth 9th Nov 88 when a crowd of 4,767 turned up.

B: Blueprint: In 1970 a blue print for a new Stamford Bridge was announced, providing a Stadium for Chelsea for the 21st century, it was thought that the new Stadium would house 60,000 fans with the capability to enlarge to 80,000, if necessary. There was going to be a direct tube station stop, reopening the old Chelsea&Fulham Station, which closed in the 40’s,onto the Stamford Bridge concourse. But with inadequate contractors and inflation going through the roof the stand took an age to build, sending Chelsea into serious debt.Infact for 6 years Chelsea were very close to saying bye bye to football, until Ken Bates came along, and on 2nd Apr 82 he paid that legendary pound for the club. And they rest they say is history.

Games Played This Week in Past Years
15th Aug 87(H) Vs Sheffield Weds... W 2-1..Goalscorers..Dixon Durie (P)..Att 21,929
19th Aug 95: (H) Vs Everton.. D...0-0…Att 30,189
7th Aug 99: (H) Vs Sunderland..W 4-0..Goalscorers..Poyet 2, Zola, Flo...Att 34,831

Who Am I?
I was born in Bow (East London) 10th Aug 85
I was signed as an inside right
I was converted to a Striker
I made my debut in Sept 06
I ended up playing 164 times
I was the first Chelsea player to 100 goals
I was known as “the gatling gun”
Who Am I?

Next week’s fixture: Liverpool (away)