That’s better, FA A game where we have actually played someone before Thank you. Ok so at least we have a bit of history against our once illustrious opponents. We have played Forest a total of 6 times in cup competitions, 3 in the FA Cup, and 1 in the League cup & 1 full member’s cup game. Our record in those 6 games is as follows: 1 loss, 2 draws, & 3 wins. All our FA cup wins against Forest have come in the 4^th round, so there’s an omen if you were looking for one, the last time we played them in Jan 00 we went onto win the cup in the last final at Wembley, so there’s another omen. Our first game in the cup Vs Forest was way back in Jan 34 where we managed a 1-1 draw with Tom Priestley getting our goal in front on a decent crowd of 53,269. 4 days later we went up to the City Ground and won 0-3 with Hughie Gallagher scoring 2 and George Gibson getting the other. Our other win, in the FA Cup was the 00 game which saw us beat Forest 2-0 with goals from Leboeuf & Wise in front of a crowd of 30,125.

Games from this week in years gone by: FA Cup 4^th round games:

Feb 18^th 67 Vs Brighton (A) D 1-1..Goalscorer..Tambling..Att 35,000

Feb 22^nd 67 Vs Brighton (H) W 4-0..Goalscorers..Tambling 2 Young,Hateley..Att54,852

Jan 24^th 70 Vs Burnley (H) D 2-2..Goalscorers..Hollins Osgood..Att42, 282

Jan 27^th 70 Vs Burnley (A) W 1-3 aet..Goalscorers..Baldwin Houseman 2...Att 32,000

CHELSEA LEGEND: Being as its FA Cup weekend I thought that this week’s lesson should be none other than the manager who brought us our first FA Cup success. Dave Sexton. Dave was in charge from Oct 67 through to Sept 74, in which time he managed Chelsea for a total of 373 games of which we won 165, drew 108 & lost 100, that’s a win percentage of 44% .His first game in charge was a 0-7 to Leeds, his last another loss this time not so bad 0-1 at home to Wolves. But in between he built probably one of the greatest Chelsea teams in our 102 year history. Even though the team itself didn’t have the stamina to win the League we were without a doubt the most stylish footballing side of the late 60’s early 70’s,and it was the cups which Dave saw as our path to glory. He took us to and won the 1970 FA Cup final. he took as to the ECWC Final in 1971 and won. We were, after beating Real Madrid the new “kings of Europe”. A lot of the 70’s team was enjoying the success a little too much and in the space of 8 days, after earlier going out of Europe to a bunch of enthusiastic part timers we had lost in the League cup final to Stoke and had been knocked out of the FA Cup by lowly Leyton Orient. Towards the end Dave had to deal with a “rebel” element in the team but alas the problem only seemed to get worse and Dave was sent packing. He left us with the happy memories of the cup wins which at the time made Chelsea a force in the English game and for this Dave Sexton belongs in…CHELSEA LEGENDS.

CHELSEA TRIVIA: David Webb is the only Defender for Chelsea to have a scored a hat trick, it was at Ipswich in a 1-3 win on Dec 26 1968.He must have liked Ipswich because 3 years & a day later he was in goal at the Bridge in a 2-0 win.

Until Next Time Then…….Cheerio! Tel