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Your Chelsea History Lesson
Chelsea vs. Reading
First, I must say what a pleasure it is to have Reading in the top flight, especially as they did so well against Manure Nited. We have not played the Royals all that much in league games…just a total 4 of times. Our first “official” league game was November 13, 1926-1927, unfortunately we didn’t do to well, as the long arduous to Elm Park got the better of our Boys in Blue. In front of a crowd of just 11,589 we lost our Division 2 game 1-2, with our lone goal coming from our # 8 Albert Thain. I say this was our first “official” league game as we had played them in the London Combination during the Great War, albeit at Stamford Bridge. So our record against Reading is not that good ..Played 4, won 1, drew 1,lost 2,we have scored a paltry 7 with the Royals banging a net busting 9 past us. The total attendance for all four games is a mind blowing 64,128 with an average of 16,032. I’ve seen more than that outside Fulham Broadway!!!. There isn’t much else I can put on this weeks fixture being as we have not played them that much, but going back to the 1996-97 season Reading were languishing in the old first division(18th), their top scorer that season was Trevor Morley (this was before his wife put a knife through his leg) with 22, their average attendance that season was 9165. Their biggest home win that season was 4-1 vs Huddersfield and their biggest loss at home was vs Palace 1-6…ooohhh a bit of a mauling there lads!!! In contrast Chelsea were starting to make headway towards a future premiership crown by buying foreign talent, one of which was Gianluca Vialli who found the net the same amount of times as his shirt number… Come on Luca you won the poxy Champions league last season was the cry from the old West stand benches… oh happy days!!! Our biggest win that season at home was against the Rokerites 6-2, with Gavin Peacock smashing in a well deserved hat trick, our biggest defeat was 0-3 to Le Arse… Nuff said on that one then!! Our average attendance was low this year as the Shed End was in the process of being built but it was still a respectable 27617.
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TOP 5 APPEARANCE MAKERS |
TOP 5 GOAL SCORERS |
| Jackie Crawford 8 | Jackie Crawford 2 |
| Sam Millington 8 | Reginald Weaver 2 |
| George W. Smith 8 | Albert Thain 1 |
| Tommy Law 7 | Jimmy Thompson 1 |
| Andrew Nesbit 7 | John Meredith 1 |
PLAYED FOR BOTH TEAMS
Kerry Dixon, Steve Francis, Paul Canoville, Micky Nutton (loan), Roy Bentley (manager)
Memorable Match
Games From This Week In Years Gone By
Oct 14th 1905 vs Lincoln City (a) W 4-1 Goals Pearson 2 McRoberts Windridge Att 3000
Oct 16th 1954 vs Manchester Utd (h) L 5-6 Goals O’Connell 3 Armstrong Lewis Att 55966
Oct 16th 2004 vs Manchester City (a) L 0-1 Att 45047
CHELSEA LEGEND... Ray “Butch” Wilkins. MBE…The first thing I have to say about Ray Wilkins is I remember seeing him play as a schoolboy at Mitchum in the early 70’s and even then with the likes of Garry Stanley ,Steve Wicks & Ray Lewington & too many others to mention, he was a class above them all. Ray was probably the most gifted midfielder we had had in a long time,in a way him and Ruud Gullit were similar in the fact that their distribution of the ball was second to none and they both hardly wasted a pass.Ray made his debut way back in oct 1973,with 8 of the fa cup winning team from 1970, as a sub for Micky Droy,his actual full debut was at 3 point lane in Apr 3 and yes you guessed right we won 2-1.He left in Aug 1979,not sure where, somewhere up north so im told for 875,000 pounds, which at the time was needed by a cash strapped Chelsea. He played 198 games and scored 34 goals for Chelsea with his full career stats being 692 league games at 13 clubs. Until the recent influx of world class foreign players Ray was our leading international cap earner. By the end of a career that took in 5 different countries,84 England caps and 1 fa cup winners medal he had confirmed that he would indeed be a CHELSEA LEGEND.
ON THIS IMPORTANT DATE: This item is what I’ve been asking all Chelsea fans in the USA to send into me. I am going to try and coincide it with the week in profile, so if you haven’t sent me those important dates yet please do. Thank you. Ok the first one is a bit difficult as it hasn’t actually happened yet, so I got the date and checked out another year. The important date is October 7, 2006, so I’m going back to October 7, 1972.On this date we had a away game at Birmingham, our Team that day was…Bonetti, Locke, McCreadie, Hollins, Droy, Harris, Garland, Kember, Osgood, Webb and Houseman. The Final score was a 2-2 draw with Webby getting one and the King of Stamford Bridge get the other. The reason for this date being important is because on October 7, 2006, Julie is going to make an honest man of Burgerbitz …CONGRATULATIONS FROM ALL AT TEXAS BLUES…P.S Don’t forget the celery!!!
I DIDN'T KNOW THAT! Even though these days we have a squad full of internationals playing for all sorts of countries. Way back in the 1930-31 season we had all the cap workers in Taiwan working overtime as we had 8 against Sunderland. There were 5 Scots,2 English and 1 Irish and as expected with a team of stars we won 5-0...I DIDN'T KNOW THAT!!!
Until Next Time Then…….Cheerio! Tel
