Chelsea Vs Fulham

Good Days and Bad Games

 

7^th Apr 84: W 4-0: Goalscorers... Nevin, Dixon 2, Speedie

13^th Feb 60: W 4-2: Goalscorers... Tindall 2, Greaves 2

6^th Mar 02: W 3-2: Goalscorers...Melchiot, Gudjohnsen, Forssell

26^th Dec 05: W 3-2: Goalscorers... Gallas, Lampard, Crespo

23^rd Apr 05: W 3-1: Goalscorers...J Cole, Lampard, Gudjohnsen

 

7^th Mar 64: L 1-2: Goalscorer...Mortimore

27^th Oct 79: L 0-2

Appearance Makers Vs Fulham

Bonetti 17,G Smith 8, R Harris 15, Makelele 7, Droy 6, Terry 9, I Britton 6, Bridges 7,A Wilson 6,Gudjohnsen 8,Tambling 10

On This Day: It’s Apr 7^th 84 and there isn’t much going on outside the world of football, apart from Jack Morris no hitting the White Sox. If that wasn’t front page news maybe the fact that Ray Parker jnr was at #1 in the English charts with that dreadful Ghostbusters song, mind you it was better than “I just called to say I love you” by Stevie Wonder. So on this day when cars were costing $11,450 and gas was $1.20 per gallon, Chelsea were trotting out to play their nearest rivals (geographically). And we ended up with our biggest league win over them. Our team that day was: Niedzwiecki, Lee, J Jones, Pates, McLaughlin, Bumstead, Nevin, Spackman, Dixon, Speedie, Thomas.

Unsung Hero: This week’s unsung is a player I admired a lot and personally I think we let him go to soon, as he was coming into his prime at the time of his departure. I’m talking about the tiny tot himself, John “spenny” Spencer. Spenny came to us from Glasgow Rangers for a bargain 450k in Aug 92. Spenny is credited with scoring Chelsea’s fastest ever goal in the premiership, Vs Leicester City in Oct 94, the time 6.7 seconds. Spenny was a very skilful forward and for someone so small he was very hard to get the ball from, he would give nothing but 100% and nothing was a lost cause. Spenny scored some pretty spectacular goals, of course there was the goal at Austria Memphis. For those of you who don’t know, years ago UEFA would only let you have three or four English players in your team, Spenny was classed as a foreigner as he was Scottish, so you can see the predicament we were in. If I remember rightly I think we had Graham Rix and Glenn Hoddle playing, a combined age of 100!!! Against Austria Memphis it was back to the walls stuff, when out of nowhere from their corner Spenny came darting out of his own area with the ball, he ran and ran and ran and ran and shot and scored, there was nobody near him, apart from the floundering keeper. Spenny had taken the ball past everyone and put it in the back of the net. The goal was a goal that would decide the tie as Memphis scored late on and we could only muster a 0-0 at the Bridge. He also scored a couple of cracking goals Vs Liverpool at the Bridge in the pouring rain in Oct 96, the second, to this day I watch it and I wonder how someone so small could twist in the air so high. Spenny left us as he had a falling out with Gullit but in the four years he was at Chelsea he played 137 games and bagged 43 goals, he also picked up 14 Caps for Scotland.

Flashback: The year is 1946 and the war is finally over. Chelsea after having played in competitions such as the London Combination (which is now what our reserves play in), the football league south and other far fetched cup competitions, were looking forward to some normality with a full set of football fixtures. With only 3 players coming back from the 1938-39 season Chelsea had to field a team of virtual unknowns, Tommy Lawton apart. The three that remained were, Dickie Spence, Sid Foss and the great Jimmy Argue. We started the season on the last day of Aug at home to Bolton, in front of a Chelsea starved crowd of 62,850. Spence and Lawton grabbed a brace each to win 4-3. Our next two games were Vs two teams from up North in red, we lost both games letting in ten goals along the way. From Mid Sept to Mid Oct we did manage to win one game Vs Leeds, but the rest we only picked up 3 points, mind you we were scoring a lot, but we were letting in even more, including five at home to Stoke City. We then won four of our next five and we were still scoring 2’s and 3’s but we always let goals in. Our next fifteen games took us through Feb, of which we only won three. Lawton was scoring for fun and up to Feb he had scored 20 times. Again losing to Stoke this time 6-1. The start of March saw us thrash Arsenal 1-2 at Highbury, then lose at home to Blackpool 1-4. From Mid March till the end of the season we played 12 more games of which we split with the win/lose columns 6 a piece, we did manage to score four at the Mighty Wolves, but we also managed to let them get two more. We finished the season in 15^th place with a points total of 39, our WLD’S were 16, 19, 7, GF 69, GA 84. Our top scorer was of course Tommy Lawton with 26 from 34 games. Our goals against were only better than Brentford 88 and Leeds 90, and they both got relegated. Our highest attendance was 67,935 Vs Stoke. We had 934,856 fans go through the turnstiles this season with an average of 44, 516, not bad when you only pull in 27,750 Vs Man Utd.

A To Z of Chelsea FC:

M: Middle names: Euclid Aklana….Clive Wilson’s

Francisus….Ed De Goey’s

Foto Sorele…Geremi’s

Mohammed…Frank Sinclair’s

C: Celery: Latin name is Apium Graveolens and it’s mentioned in “Homers Odyssey”. The book not the Simpson’s episode.

L: League Cup Boycott: We didn’t field a team in 1961/62, 1962/63, 1965/66 as the fixture list was deemed too crowded already. We were actually the holders in 1965/66 having won it the season before. The decision for not defending it was because were had to deal with European Competition and didn’t want fixture congestion.

Games Played This Week in Past Years:

27th Sept 03: Vs Aston Villa (H) W 1-0...Goalscorer: Hasselbaink...Att 41,182

25^th Sept 54: Vs Newcastle (A) W 1-3...Goalscorers: McNichol, Bentley 2...Att 45,659

24^th Sept 66: Vs Arsenal (H) W 3-1...Goalscorers: Osgood, Tambling 2...Att 48,001

Who Am I?

I was born in East London.

I was signed from Mansfield for 250k.

I had a Testimonial.

I had to compete for my position against five internationals.

I have won Fa, League and Ecwc medals

I played 135 times but didn’t score

I like to think I was popular at Chelsea

I left in the late 90’s

Who Am I?

Last weeks answer: Marcel Desailly

Next week’s fixture: Bolton (Home)

Click on the link below to see the Archived History Lessons.

Archived History Lessons