Season by Season: 1921/22

Players come and go, managers move on, directors, and even the very bricks and mortar of a football club, change eventually. Less transient are the crowds that are the lifeblood of the place, and through them the folk memory is passed on down the years.

And it’s a club’s reputation, its character, that once established is the only real constant.

Chelsea Football Club epitomises this.

Even now, established as we are among the elite of the Premiership, we are constantly reminded of the club's enduring “inconsistency,” the perennial struggle to see of supposedly inferior opposition, the underachieving glamour, the, well, unusualness.

Such personality traits were already apparent after 15 years of football at Stamford Bridge. By this time Chelsea had been promoted twice and relegated once, and had recently finished 3rd and then 18th in consecutive First Division seasons.

The club the Mearses built had earned a reputation for failing to follow up well-earned victories with further wins.

A poor 1950s joke might equally have applied back then: Two men are looking at newspapers at King’s Cross Station. “I see Chelsea won yesterday,” says one. “They can’t have,” frowns his pal, “they won last week.”

So how sweet April 1922 must have been for supporters when the club enjoyed one of its best ever sequences, winning seven on the spin. All of them, except a 4-1 thrashing of Aston Villa in Birmingham, were against teams lower the First Division.

The team boasted the necessary glamour, too, in Great Dane Nils Middelboe, the dashing Jack Cock, trainee medic and able right-winger Dr John Bell and the colourful, unorthodox keeper Ben Howard Baker (pictured above, right), a former high-jump champion whose party trick was to kick light bulbs out of chandeliers.

Baker, known as ‘HB’, became (and remains) the only goalie to have scored for Chelsea, when he converted the last-minute winning penalty against Bradford City in November 1921.

Two months later, against Arsenal, another of his spot-kicks bounced back into play and he raced the length of the pitch in vain to stop them scoring. He never appeared on scoresheet again.

“Just to make the poor fellow taking the spot-kick a bit more nervous” Keeper Ben Howard Baker on the reason for his antics before facing a penalty taker

Much like Chelsea sticksman Petar Borota six decades later, HB seemed disdainful of the 18-yard box, often rushing out into midfield in pursuit of the ball. He would play basketball around the box, flicking the ball over an opponent, while the coach was barking through a loud hailer for him to "get in with it!" And, like a Bruce Grobbelaar or Fabien Barthez, he would spend ages joshing around before facing a penalty kick himself.

He was an absolute hero, the epitome of the old Chelsea, and stayed in contact with the club well into the 1980s. HB died in 1987, perhaps the club’s longest-lived player at 94.

Chelsea finished ninth in 1922, but what an entertaining place the Bridge must have been.

In 1921/22...
Facts & figures: HB conceded an average of just 1.082 goals in his 93 games
Cup run: First Round, losing to West Bromwich Albion
All the rage: the luxurious Orient Express now travels all the way to mystical Istanbul

Season by Season: 1905/6

On Saturday September 2nd 1905, just before three o’clock, a marching band, followed by a rabble of excited football fans draped in red and white stripes, wound its way through the Victorian streets of Stockport into County's Edgeley Park stadium. The largest ever crowd for the Cheshire club had come to catch the League debut of this glamorous new team from London, Chelsea FC.

Chelsea lost out, narrowly, 0-1. But some principles, established straight away, have resonated ever since. The team was attractive and ambitious, with many non-English players (albeit Scots and Irish); they played football with attacking flair; and they participated in a ‘first’ – larger-than-life keeper Willie Foulke had to adhere to a brand new rule dictating that goalies must stay rooted to the line when County were awarded a penalty.

Skipper Foulke – who saved the penalty – was a boisterous, 6’3”, 22st Shropshireman. One opposing forward felt facing him was “as though darkness had come over the goal.” He was marketed much like David Beckham is today, albeit on difference criteria: men marched around town when Chelsea were visiting with sandwich boards saying: 'Come and see the 23 stone goalkeeper!'

The England international was just one of many big names drawn in the summer to the new name in English football. Manager John Tait “Jacky” Robertson, himself a Scotsman, had managed to recruit, amongst others, the prolific Johnnie Kirwan, David Copeland and 5’7” inside-forward Jimmy Windridge, who notched our first hat-trick in the 5-1 home debut win over Hull on Sept 9th.

“What do you think of our Ground… Good enough for SECOND Division Football, is it not? And it is only a baby as yet. Wait until is it full grown, and then – well, we shall see what we shall Chel-sea.” Chelsea Chronicle, Sept 4th 1905

The novelty of the capital's first big professional Football League club drew massive crowds all around the country. On Good Friday 1906, for the crunch visit of title rivals Manchester United, an extraordinary attendance of 67,000 was recorded at the Bridge - more than three times the figure for the return fixture at Clayton.

With record-breaking numbers drawn to Stamford Bridge it was clear the club was too big for this level. Robertson's men decimated lesser opponents: Barnsley 6-0, Lincoln 7-0, Blackpool 6-0, Port Vale 7-0, Orient 6-0, Leeds 4-0.

But a poor spell of earning just three points from a possible ten (it was two for a win in those days) during the run-in meant that our expected promotion charge fizzled out behind runaway winners Bristol City and Manchester United, who claimed the other promotion slot.

The Fulham Chronicle ran articles to decide a nickname for the exciting debutants. Against ‘The Chinamen’, ‘The Buns’ and ‘The Cherubs’, we might be grateful that ‘The Pensioners’ came out on top, even though, as the Football Star observed, it was “rather suggestive of the lights of other days.”

Our motto in that first season was less in dispute. “Don’t worry!” was the regular rallying cry of millionaire owner Gus Mears (pictured left). It served just as well for most of the 100 to follow.

In 1905-6…
• League: Finished third in Division Two
• FA Cup: Reached third qualifying round v. Crystal Palace
• Fact: Our first ever signing – and goalscorer – was Robert ‘Bob’ McRoberts
• All the rage: double decker buses rumble along the King’s Road for the first time