OnePeterOsgood

Some names there that I had forgotten - we signed Bobby Evans towards the end of his distinguished career for Celtic and Scotland. We signed Johnny Brooks from Tottenham in the deal that too Les Allen to Spurs, and Sylvan Anderson came from Reading and was quite a decent player. I don’t remember much about Charlie Livesley and I have previously mentioned Reg Matthews on this forum - the man who made other goalies look sane!

I think there was one in Hendon on the site of what now is the Brent Cross shopping centre.

Good point, but who on earth is going to going to buy Disasi Tosin Bada and Fofana?

Totally agree - worst half I can remember in over 60 years of support …

I looked up a list of players signed by us since these two took over recruitment. Out of a very, very long list I would say that only Palmer, Caicedo and J Pedro have been (qualified) successes … check it out and see what you think!

I suppose the one big disadvantage of not being in the CL next season is that we won’t be able to attract quality players like Garnacho, Gittens, Delap and Bunonotte!

Yes, it was just a friendly to mark the opening of the floodlights. I thought it was 3-0 so I was close! I love the wording ‘Fooodlight Match’ on the front of the program! Before then, matches in winter usually started at about 2.15 so they could finish before it got dark!

Sorry, mate, I was in the “posh seats!”

The match to celebrate the new floodlights took place on my 9th birthday, March 19, 1957. Although it was a school night I was allowed to go … you couldn’t really have stopped me! An evening match against …. foreigners! Whatever next? The opposition was Sparta Prague and I think we won 3-0?

I also remember going to an away match at West Ham as a child and sitting on my own amongst all the WH fans .. yes really! I did have mates of course but they were all Tottenham supporters so I was often on my own at matches … getting to the Bridge was not a problem but how did I get to Upton Park? Anyway, the game was only memorable because of the really toxic atmosphere made even worse when one of our players clattered into their star player, Phil Woosnam, who had to go off injured … remember this was in the days before any subs. But after an absence of maybe 10 minutes Woosnam emerged from the dressing room and took up his position on the field … cue absolute bedlam with the most visceral and hate-filled noise from a football stadium that I’d ever heard mixed with unbelievable delight that he had returned. Funnily enough I remember feeling quite shaken by the scale of it but never frightened or vulnerable... It just wasn’t like that in those days …. no one had a dig at me or said anything really … today??

The first away match I ever attended was a cup game at Leyton Orient in about 1958 when I was 10. We played in red and I couldn’t understand why we were getting booed all the time, particularly at corners … I think we won 2-0.

Whilst dreading what’s going to happen to us when ‘proper’ football resumes, my thoughts returned to better times and my all time hero, the one and only Peter Osgood who took over the mantle from the previous incumbent, Frank Blunstone. Of course, , there has been competition along the way, mainly from Zola and Hazard, but Ossie keeps the crown as far as I’m concerned. Back in the day, we had an outstanding youth development programme, matched only by Man U who also produced multiple stars of the game. The matchday programme was always full of the successful exploits of our young stars so we kind of knew them well before they broke into the first team. Of course, many didn’t make the grade … in particular I remember two who were outstanding goal scorers for the youth and reserve teams and of whom great things were expected … Colin Shaw and Barry Smart, the latter I think, once scoring 7 or 8 goals in one game! I believe Colin did play a few games for the first team, but without much success, but I can’t recall Barry ever making an appearance. I only mention this because we didn’t know anything about Ossie until he appeared … fully formed and ready to go! I can’t remember any anticipation or advance warning … he just started playing! In that breakthrough season he was something else and we were all in awe of what we saw and excited about what he was going to help produce for the team. He had it all - touch, skill, trickery, an eye for goal, awareness of the game and, of course, a more than passing acquaintance with the dark arts! (I think Jack Charlton would vouch for that!). He never had great pace, and certainly not after he broke his leg at Blackpool, courtesy of Emlyn Hughes. Only a week or so before that fatal match, he scored away to Man C and celebrated by taunting the home City fans with double-handed V-signs. Fans of other teams considered the broken leg to be the appropriate karma for this hostile behaviour. I remember the morning after the Blackpool match spotting a headline on the back page of someone’s newspaper - “Osgood Breaks Leg” … it was the worst headline for a Chelsea fan since -“ Greaves Wants a Transfer”. I had the honour of meeting Ossie many years later … a long time after he stopped playing. Somehow one of our mates managed to get hold of the great man, or his ‘people’ and arranged for him to do a birthday greeting on video for another mate of ours, all Chelsea fans. The ‘shoot’ was arranged for a matchday at the Bridge at the time when Ossie was doing some hospitality work for the club. Although I was a father with kids of my own by this time I was still really excited and nervous to finally meet him, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist telling him how much he had meant to me growing up. We met on the concourse and he asked us if we’d like to do the filming on the pitch … would we??? So Ossie goes up to some sort of official and asks him if we can go on to the pitch … Peter Osgood, the king of Stamford Bridge having to ask permission from some jobsworth to set foot on the pitch that he graced for so many years! I was mortified! Anyway, we do the interview… Ossie is great - “Hi, Keith, happy 40th. I hear you were a tough centre-half in your day …pleased I didn’t have to play against you …” all the stuff you’d expect, and the he ends up with this - “Some one asked me the other day how my Chelsea team would get on against the current team, and I told him we’d probably lose about 3-0 … really, said this bloke, why do you say that? Well, says Ossie, we are all over 50!” Any other Ossie memories out there?

In last night’s England team were Tomori, Livramento, Madueke, Solanke, Hall plus Guehi in the squad … not good enough for Chelsea but good enough for England? Not sure if this reflects worse on our transfer policy or the standard needed to play for England in 2026!

…. of more benefit to the team when he was injured!

That Dewsbury-Hall fella looked good … why don’t we buy him? 🤔

Thanks but that all depends how we get on tonight … I might be spending all day tomorrow in a darkened room!

Thank you, but I just can’t recall it … I must have been there as I went to all the home games and in my family there was none of that “oh, it’s a school night” nonsense!

Not a chance … keeping 11 men on the pitch would be a result!

Thanks, mate. Can you just remind me about that game? It’s not one I can instantly recall so a bit of a jog may help please. Year? Result? Ta.

I remember both those games so well. After coasting our way through the season to what seemed like the inevitable promotion, we hit a substantial wobble, the low point, I think, being a 0-1 loss at home to Walsall! I’m pretty sure that, in order to steady the ship, we bought Derek Kevan from WBA … now Derek was an England international so I was very excited until I saw him play! I think his first goal for us was in that 7-0 drubbing of Portsmouth and that was probably it! Incidentally, didn’t we score 7 against Portsmouth in their two consecutive visits to the Bridge, although several years apart? The game up at Sunderland was absolutely crucial … in those days the only was to get the score was on the radio and I remember taking my transistor radio to the park in order to listen to the second-half commentary while we were playing football. Tommy Harmer, who we had also signed that season when things got desperate, scored from a corner with an in-off and there was much discussion at the time as to what part of his tiny body he scored with! Harmer was considered at that time as the best player never to have played for England unlike today when you are likely to get a cap provided you have a decent pair of boots!

Thanks for the photo of Bobby and ‘Battler’ … it was of course Brittan not Britain - prescriptive text! I did get the chance to meet Ossie some years later, and the entire Chelsea team on a beach in 1961 but both those tales are for a different topic!

I think it was the last game of the season and was simply scheduled as a home game. I also think it was the first game of Ian ‘Battler’ Britain for us. Some years later I met Bobby Charlton at a do and I told him I was there for his last ever game which he seemed to be genuinely interested to hear unlike some celebs you meet who couldn’t give a toss!

I don’t necessarily disagree with you but I just wonder whether he’d be a regular starter (and finisher!) with Arsenal or City which is where the bar is set at the moment?

After yesterday’s debacle, I tried to remember when I ever felt so despondent about our team and my thoughts turned to the mid ‘60’s and the three consecutive semi finals. Back then the FA Cup was a really important competition, arguably more so than the league because, I guess, there were more teams with a chance of winning it, or, at least, getting to Wembley which was a big deal in itself. Up until this period our season was usually over by the end of February… the league was almost a non qualifier for us and we’d be knocked out the cup by the end of the 4th round … getting to the fifth round was a cup run for us! So getting to the semi final in ‘65 was a great achievement and I travelled to Villa Park with great excitement but little expectation! So it proved … I don’t remember much about the game except that I don’t think we were ever really in it but, as they say, I was “… just pleased to be there!” Back to Villa Park the next year, this time against Sheffield W who were a decent team back then. They had Jim McCalliog playing for them - I think he had joined them from us at the beginning of the season and whilst he’d never done much for us he played a blinder that day and, of course, contributed to our defeat. I think we should have beaten them, we were a better side and this defeat was much harder to take than the one the previous year. I think that it was after this defeat that Tommy Docherty broke up the team selling Venables , Bridges etc. Also I think we played in the Milan kit of thick blue and black stripes with a view to adopting it as our new kit but this idea was shelved after the defeat. This may have been the after the Liverpool game but I don’t remember On to 1967 and the mighty Leeds … a grudge match if ever there was one! I think this was the game when Tony Hately scored the only decent goal he ever scored for us - a towering header in the true sense of the phrase! This was also the game when Lorimer ‘scored’ a fantastic ‘equaliser’ direct from a free kick which was subsequently disallowed as the ref hadn’t blown his whistle for the kick to be taken! This was real karma for all the nastiness and dirty play perpetrated by Leeds over the years. So we played Tottenham in my first ever final … a great occasion where all the fans turned up but the players didn’t! We were never in it, but thankfully better times were ahead … Does anyone here have any other memories of these games, or perhaps correct some of my misremembered facts?