Season by Season: 1926/27

The third season of our third spell in the Second Division had that feeling of déjà-vu all over again. Leaders of the pack in the early stages, Chelsea stuttered in the colder months, recovered, then crucially faded again, collating just three points from a last possible ten. David Calderhead's side finished fourth, following fifth and third place finishes in the previous two campaigns.

The defence would concede a respectable 52 all season – second best at that level – but once again the attack was found wanting at crucial times. Albert Thain and Bob Turnbull, Bobby Charlton combover hairstyle and all, managed a half-decent 31 League goals between them, but no other player could reach double figures in support. Manchester City finished third with 46 more strikes than Chelsea's 62.

Two new arrivals were especially significant. Tommy Law was a Glaswegian full-back who would make more than 300 appearances for Chelsea, establish himself as a solid if unspectacular international performer, and even turn down a more lucrative contract with French club Nimes to stick around until 1939. Law was a great and popular servant at the Bridge, renowned for his crowd-pleasing slide tackles. He also scored 19 goals, many of them penalties, in that time and became a regular on the Bridge terraces after the boots were finally hung up.

An astute replacement for the popular Ben Howard Baker, 30-year-old Sam Millington became our stalwart between the sticks. Walsall-born Millington (pictured keeping goal in the Cup against Cardiff City) was invariably seen with wide, flat cap on head in public, masking another Charltonesque pate, and would set a record of 78 shutouts in his 245 games over six seasons in west London. Half a century would pass before Peter Bonetti, he of the gloves not the titfer, would eventually break that record.

Team resources were generally stretched. In early November the club received news that Turnbull, current top scorer who had notched 20 the previous season, was to serve a lengthy suspension for disciplinary reasons.

"Chelsea F.C. yesterday received official notification from the Football Association that Turnbull, their centre-forward, has been suspended for two months for an incident in connection with the match between South Shields and Chelsea on the South Shields ground on Saturday, October 9" Daily Express, 6 November 1926

The following day a fine of £45 was handed out to the Pensioners by the FA (and to Spurs and Clapton Orient) for not fielding the strongest available league side in the London Combination Cup - despite reaching the final at Highbury and going on to beat Orient there, 2-1.

Happily, after threadbare fare in recent years, there came a surprisingly rich FA Cup run too. Chelsea saw off, amongst others, Accrington Stanley (who are they?) by 7-2 – one of our all-time great wins. Thain and Turnbull weighed in with five and six goals respectively in that competition.

A full house in the sixth round – the furthest the team had progressed for ten years – witnessed stalemate between the Blues and First Division runners-up Cardiff City.

The return at Ninian Park was a fantastic affair. Chelsea conceded a penalty but fought back only to lose by the odd goal in five, Andy Wilson also missing a vital spot-kick for the Londoners. The Welsh went on to lift the Cup, seeing off Arsenal 1-0 in the final.

In 1926/27...

Facts & figures: 70,184 watch the first match in our FA Cup tie against Cardiff at the Bridge

Cup run: Sixth round, losing to Cardiff City in a replay

All the rage: feline fine – the Cats Protection League is founded

Season by Season: 1920/21

Progress on the field and the official patronage now bestowed on our inter-national class stadium by visiting royalty and the staging of FA Cup pointed to a very bright future. The 72,805 who attended the 1920 final tie at the Bridge brought in record receipts of £13,414. Football, and its place in society, was also changing.

The advent of a Third Division, almost exclusively made up of members of the old Southern League, extended the heartland of the game. Newspapers’ sports pages suddenly expanded to provide sufficient coverage and new dedicated magazines sprang up.

Crowds were returning to the terraces. Attendances of 45-50,000 were the norm. Chelsea had become a very big club with a reputation for regularly fielding top internationals.

“The best centre forward exhibition ever” Football writer on Jack Cock’s performance for England v Scotland, 1920

In October 1920 an enormous 76,000 crowd turned up to watch Chelsea seek revenge over newly-promoted Spurs, who had decimated their London rivals 5-0 at White Hart Lane the week before. (Sadly, the Lilywhites merely resumed where they had left off, and the Pensioners lost 0-4.)

Still the Corinthian spirit survived at the club, despite Vivian Woodward’s retirement from playing. Danish international Nils Middelboe would often skipper the side, and over the next few years more famous amateurs would join him, including goalkeeper Ben Howard Baker.

The war was still a strong memory – players were listed in the “Chelsea Chronicle” with the relevant service rank appended to their names. And, of course, the red-coated Pensioners sat proudly in the grandstand, as they do to this day.In truth, this was a disappointing period in our history after the promise of 1919. Veteran star winger Harry Ford (pictured, top left) was starting to miss more games, the over-reliance on Jack Cock’s goals was proving problematic, and a half-decent defensive record suffered accordingly.

On the back of the FA Cup finals success, the Chelsea board’s ambitious strategy for the Stamford Bridge stadium included an increase of capacity to 80,000 with steep, terraced banking at the north and south ends, improved conditions for dignitaries and no less than 61 turnstiles to handle those with their paste-board tickets or cash to hand over on the day.

There were even plans to build walkways from local train and tube stations. Not for the first or last time in the ground's history they amounted to nothing, and notions of the Fulham Road becoming the permanent host for national events would soon be scuppered by the building of Wembley Stadium.

Such thoughts of renovations at Chelsea did not extend anywhere near deep enough into the playing staff, however, and an ageing squad struggled to live up to the glamorous setting.

Come May 1921, we were back in the then familiar territory of 18th in the 22-strong First Division, and too close to relegation for comfort.

In 1920/21...
Facts & figures: a benefit match against the British Army in Sept 1920 was won 2-0
Cup run: Fourth round, versus Cardiff City
All the rage: Shaving fanatic Jacob Schick invents the Magazine Repeating Razor, based on a gun design

Season by Season: 1919/20

Four years of regional league competition and friendlies ended on the opening day of September 1919. In the opening match of the first postwar season of official Football League business, the Chelsea team showed five changes from April 1915 – perhaps less disruption than could reasonably have been hoped for, given the ravages of the Great War.

The six who’d played in Chelsea’s last official League match were stalwarts Walter Bettridge, Jack Harrow, Laurence Abrams, Harold Halse and keeper James Molyneux, now well into his 30s and under pressure from understudy Colin Hampton, a war hero who’d received the Military Medal for Gallantry in Mesopotamia. His bravery and dependability on the less vital stage of association football saw him splitting custodial duties with the popular Moly in what would turn out to be an excellent year for the club.

Chelsea had been handed a reprieve from relegation by a mixture of match-fixing by our rivals for the drop Man United and a League decision to expand the top flight by two clubs – Chelsea and Arsenal.

The board at Stamford Bridge wasted no time in validating the Football League’s decision. Thirty-five thousand people watched at Goodison Park as the slickers from the Big Smoke stunned the reigning Division One title-holders Everton with a 3-2 win, including a penalty from Bob Whittingham that extended his amazing wartime goalscoring sequence.

“A Thrilling Opening. Chelsea Conquer The Champions at Goodison” Athletic News headline, September 1, 1919

What chimed with both sets of fans was that back in 1915 a 2-2 draw at the Bridge had confirmed the Toffeemen as champions. They would finish this campaign in 16th place, despite gaining revenge in London against us a week later with a single goal.

However, personnel change remained inevitable. The ageing Whittingham soon moved on, and in his place arrived another Chelsea and England matinée idol, Jack Cock, from cash-strapped Huddersfield. The Londoner would top-score for the Pensioners for the next three seasons, and managed 21 in his first.

Striker Cock (above, right) hardened Chelsea's image as football's glamour club by singing on the local music hall stage and appearing (along with some of his teammates) in the first-ever football feature film, a silent movie produced by the Samuelson Film Company called, originally, 'The Winning Goal.'

It helped ensure that the arty, actor types still thronged to Stamford Bridge, though quite what the terrace wits made of a team with Hampton at the rear, Dickie in the middle and Cock upfront is not recorded.

This season proved the most successful of David Calderhead’s 26 as manager: his team finished a high-rolling third in the League behind surprise package West Brom and Burnley.

In the FA Cup there was also much at which to thrill. The kings of England and Spain watched consecutive victories in west London over Leicester and Bradford. The Bridge was definitely the place to be. One Manchester newspaper joked that Claude Kirby should have 'By Royal Appointment' engraved above the gates to the stadium.

As the cup semi-final against Aston Villa loomed, the debate reasonably turned to the FA’s decision finally to realise Fred Parker's original dream and stage the final at Stamford Bridge.

Should Chelsea be able to play the final at home? With typical generosity, the Pensioners ended the debate by dipping out 1-3 to Villa, the eventual trophy winners, in front of a crestfallen 37,771 fans.

Days later virtually the same team took the League points off them with a 2-1 win in front of 70,000. It was sets of results such as those that helped create the 'inconsistent' tag worn by generations of Blues.

In 1919/20...
Facts & figures: Jack Cock was signed for £2,500
Cup run: The semi-finals, losing to Aston Villa
All the rage: Mechanical teddy bears

Season by Season: 1914/15

The English football season was played with a frown this year. War had broken out across Europe in the summer of 1914.

With dreadful reports of battlefield carnage in the daily papers and horror stories passed on by the war weary on leave, many felt that such a trivial exercise should be suspended. Others wished to retain the sport as a necessary diversion. At the outbreak of war, Chelsea’s directors expressed the view that “football will be played as far as possible.”

In a show of solidarity with the war effort, though, they arranged for a percentage of takings to be donated to the Prince of Wales’s war fund – a facet of the regime since its outset, and a hangover from the Victorian belief in charity. A 1-1 draw with Spurs also benefited “dependants of those who had joined the forces from the Tube, Tramway and Omnibus companies” to the tune of £200.

The club also dispatched 50 footballs off to various parts of the war front.

Millions had rallied to Lord Kitchener’s appeal for volunteers; many were drawn from the terraces and locker rooms of football. Never the less matchday recruitment drives at stadiums including Stamford Bridge were met with apathy.

In response, the British establishment began a furious campaign of shame directed against the game and its supporters, and Chelsea stars Viv Woodward and local Harry Ford were among the first 'Chelsea Die-Hards' to join the 17th Middlesex Regiment, the 'Footballers' Battalion.'

Not that the entrepreneurialism of JT Mears (brother of the late founder, and new owner of Stamford Bridge) was completely curtailed. An application for a liquor licence at the Bridge in February 1915 was wrathfully rejected by local magistrate John Grey on the grounds that “I do not like to give facilities for entertainment to football at this time.” Considering JT (host of the Swan in Richmond) and the two Janeses on the Chelsea board were licensed victuallers, this must been quite a blow.

The voice from the trenches, meanwhile, was strongly in favour of football continuing. Hundreds of letters were received on the Fulham Road asking how Chelsea were faring and passing on their best. One wrote: 'The troops (well the Londoners anyway) nearly went dotty when they heard of Chelsea's victory over Newcastle. It interested the Tommies far more than any war could.'

On the field Chelsea’s League form was as depressed as the national mood. Had the league not been suspended at the end of the season Chelsea would have been relegated.

Yet the Cup provided rare moments of joy for fans at home and in the trenches. Servicemen, some as prisoners-of-war, had keen letters of support published in the Chelsea programme as the Pensioners saw off Swindon, Arsenal, Man City, Newcastle and Everton on the way to meeting Sheffield United in the FA Cup Final in April 1915.

“The nation is engaged in a huge conflict, and has sons of Empire in action in six or seven different parts of the world. But those who are in our island will rest awhile today” The Sporting Chronicle, on the morning of the 1915 FA Cup final

It said that so many of those who attended football at the time wore army uniforms that it was dubbed the 'Khaki Final.' Eyewitness reports barely mention the fact, though: they draw more attention to the dismal, foggy drizzle.

The venue was Old Trafford, with wartime travel restrictions imposed, and it was a wet and windy welcome for the Blues fans who had struggled north for the occasion.

History records Fred Taylor as the first skipper of a Chelsea team at a cup final - quite some achievement for a club that had not existed ten years earlier. Lieutenant Vivian Woodward had been given special leave to play but on the day of the game, in typically gentlemanly fashion, he stepped down in favour of Bob McNeil, whose goals had propelled the Pensioners there.

Sheffield United ran out easy 3-0 winners. In handing out the medals, Lord Derby caught the mood with a speech noting that “the clubs and players had seen the cup played for, and it was now the duty of everyone to join with each other and play a sterner game for England.”

In 1914/15...
Facts and figures: Chelsea estimated 200,000 supporters would have tried to go had the final been in London
Cup run: Runners-up
All the rage: John Buchan's epic spy novel, 'The 39 Steps"