BernardLambourde

Where were the away fans situated for those games? Were there any at all? I recall from my video that when Man City scored (a rather good goal as it happens.....lobbed the keeper from outside the box) you could only hear individual clapping. Sounded rather eerie.

I think the status of the team and the money thrown at the player is invariably more of a deal breaker than "playing in a mind-bending 60,000+ seater rather than an old-school 45,000 seater". Arsenal play in a bigger and more modern stadium than Chelsea yet Juan Mata chose Chelsea over them....Ashley Cole left them to come to Chelsea. You think they care about playing in a smaller stadium when they're doubling their wages and winning trophies? Arsenal are making a lot of match day revenue but maybe their failure to re-invest that revenue in the playing squad is inadvertantly costing them money elsewhere....via the mediums of global broadcasting and merchandise sales. The foreign markets the clubs are so obsessed with are notoriously fickle. 7 going on 8 years without a trophy doesn't help your 'fanbase' in Asia which can be so lucrative.

The FA in general take some beating. Moralistic, condescending guardian angels......who spend their time taking freebies and doinking Faria Alam behind their wife's back.

I always though Michael Crawford was a weird one. I know he was only acting, but it is hard to magine Frank Spencer standing in the Shed.

I dunno if the goal of this game is on the internet anywhere but I used to have it on video. After Bumstead scored the only goal of the game, he ran over to celebrate with Durie on the touchline who had taken a long throw. As they're celebrating, you can see a Chelsea fan in the East Stand behind them.....on his own amongst the Arsenal lot.....and he is going absolutely mental.

Who cares? Like a bloke in Malaysia who has purchased a snide Chelsea shirt actually counts.

Thanks Whitewall. So was Paul Dempsey the regular bloke or the Irishman who stood in for one game? If I remember correctly, Jonathan Pearce commentated on the last couple of home games....Leeds 1-0 (Bumstead) and Bradford 3-1 when we lifted the trophy. Chelsea scored some quality goals that season.

Nice rant Carshalton Blue. Mellor blamed the hooligan element.....but it just so happened to coincide with the worst team in Chelsea's history? Convenient? Then when the club made a resurgence, he suddenly came back. Vines was actually inteviewed in the Chelsea magazine recently and seemed pretty sheepish about beginning his support of Chelsea in 96 (after getting into football after Euro 96'....oh dear....ha ha).

Hey, I have a quick question but didn't think it warranted it's own thread. It refers to a Chelsea Vs Swindon game in the promotion season of 1988/89. Chelsea won 3-2 and it was a game rife with errors (possibly 3 own goals if memory serves me correctly). I had the season review on video and it had the same commentator for every game (don't know the guy's name but he did all the Chelsea games back then. Used to say "well you won't see better than that!" whenever there was a good goal.....then repeat the exact same thing the next good goal was scored. Eh? I thought I would never see better than Dixon vs Luton last week?). However, for this Swindon game he wasn't used and they had a different commentator on.....some Irish bloke. He was a dreadful commentator and got all the player's names wrong. Dunno where the hell they found him from. "Hey, can you commentate?" "Erm....yes?" "Great, you're hired for the Swindon game!" It used to make me laugh when I was younger though. "What a peach of a goal by Goooidon Joy-ry. Foive minutes ov da game gaaaane.....and da man shows dat.....his shooting boots are on again todaaaaaaaaaay!" Then he called Joe McLaughlin John McLaughlin for the entire game. Does anyone else remember this? (I doubt it but thanks anyway)

Can't see it going down to the 80's figures but something need to be done. With the 80's you had football violence keeping a lot of people away from games.

Right, I see what you mean. Yes, I think it is pretty well documented that his tackling leaves a lot to be desired.....but I was talking about when he is on the ball himself.

Always makes me laugh when Fulham sing "where were you when you were sh*t?" at Chelsea.....seemingly without a degree of irony. For a ten year period between 1986 and 1996 they didn't average over 5k. Then Al Fayed and his money came along and hey presto......now they have average attendances of 25,000.

Spurs, Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Leeds and maybe West Ham. They're the main ones. I don't know one Chelsea fan who is bothered about Fulham or QPR. One Fulham victory over Chelsea in over 30 years is hardly enough to stir a rivalry....and QPR fans may cite the time from around the mid-70's to the mid-90's when the sides were evenly matched.....but what about before the 70's? The two clubs had barely played due to Rangers being a lower league side......and what about since they were relegated in 1996? They only came back up last year. A long time for this 'rivalry' to be dormant. We only really played them regularly for a 20 year period in a history stretching back 107 years....and for them even longer. It is nothing in the greater scheme of things. Important to them maybe but not to Chelsea.

I meant in footballing terms. He has a great first touch and a fine array of passing. He's a classy player. Don't think anyone could really argue with that. Unless you thought I was talking about his dress sense or something. That he saunters around Moss Side wearing a cravat.

Check this out...Arsenal fans arrested after beating a man to death: http://www.mirror.co...-inside-1300574 Now compare reaction of Gooners on the same site of the original link in this thread: http://arsenal-mania...hp?f=2&t=193242 "It had nothing to do with football. Its like saying its our fault for 9/11 because Bin Laden reportedly went to a few games at Highbury." "Who knows whether they were even Arsenal fans, they might have just wanted to blend in with the masses and later go home in a large group without being noticed." "I bet 3/4 of crimes committed every day are done by men who support a football team, so then what? What's the next thread going to be .... 2 Bolton fans rob a corner shop. 4 Wigan fans beat up and mug an old lady. 1 Spurs fan guilty of starting the London riots." "Has very little to do with Arsenal but any avoidable death, especially something as nasty as this, is a sad event." "But its not a football related inccident, its not anything to do with AFC as a club. The use of the clubs name is clearly being thrown into the article on account that they happened to be at the away game sunday." With their comments regarding Chelsea fans..... "The fans - be they plastic glory-hunters or neanderthal nazis singing songs about killing jews and gas chambers and disrespecting minute's silences for Hillsborough victims. I have witnessed groups of them on trains racially abusing passengers and staff, singing "Hitler was a Blue, he gassed the ******* Jews" and spitting, belching, farting and generally wallowing in being animals, utter subhuman scum." "Reknowned for being flash, cocky and aggressive with odious, notoriously violent, racist fans to match." "Forgetting their pathetic fans and their hatred and racism, the irony is staggering. The only reason they are not playing clubs from the Championship, and have had their success, is because a Russian Jew bailed them out. Let's hope Abramovich hears about the racism, dumps Chelsea, and moves to another plastic club." So when some racist boneheads associated themselves with Chelsea.....years and years ago.....it is fair to label all Chelsea supporters as scum. But when 4 of their own MURDER someone in 2012.....it is nothing to do with Arsenal....just an act of human violence not to be linked to football or the club. Absolute hypocrties. I think they're turning into the Liverpool of the South. Endlessly going on about their illustrious (yet European Cup-less) history in misty-eyed romanticism - as they struggle to come to terms with the fact they now longer compete for the big prizes......then they're forever claiming victim status -"it's not fair.....Chelsea and City have got money.....it's not fair....Stoke foul us....." etc.......accusing their local rivals of being small fry and bitter whilst being exctly that themselves.....and of course now murdering rival fans....all the time while self proclaiming themselves as 'classy'. No gold star, blood stained hypocrites.

And we didn't win anything in 03! Ha ha.

Scholes is probably a bit classier but Lamps has been far more consistent with his goals. Scholes hasn't contributed for United with loads of goals in a season for years now. He is obviously a quality player but it always baffled me hearing the likes of ZZ and Xavi bum licking him. Erm....you're both better than him yourself!

Well? Unfortunately for me, it would only be whatever the biggest ever attendance since the reformation of the ground (near the 42,500 mark) has been. I've been going since 87/88 and I can't recall a crowd bigger than that since as the stadium hasn't held more. The last time we got over 45,000 would probably have been the game when Liverpool won the league in 1986 (around 46k I think) and over 50k would probably have been the Fulham game on boxing day 1976 (I think). 60k you're probably going back to the early 70's. So what is the biggest gate you've ever been part of at Chelsea? For my old man, it was 70,000 for a cup game with Spurs in the early 60's and my Grandfather was at the Moscow Dynamo game in 1945 when an estimated 100,000 were present. I guess this question is only really applicable to people over around 35.

More from the 'history' obsessed Juve fan slayer: No, money can't buy you history....and Jose should know. I almost choked with laughter when I read that Jose Mourinho has told his Champions League rivals Manchester City they cannot buy the kind of history enjoyed by his club Real Madrid. The same Jose Mourinho who used to laugh at similar claims from Kopites whenever his Chelsea side met Liverpool in the same competition. So I'm guessing he's currently printing off 80,000 copies of the following song to be placed on seats at the Bernabeu to welcome City next month, waiting for his cue to lead the Madrid fans in a rousing rendition of.... "F*** off City FC, you ain't got no history, nine European Cups and 32 leagues, that's what we call history." He'll look good as a conductor. I can't recall Jose ever even commenting on it. What a pr1ck.

Good shout. Only played for 4 seasons though right? He more-or-less carried those Chelsea sides to mid-table. Without him, relegation probably would have occurred sooner than it did.

What makes me laugh with that new list is that in the 'most offensive' list, all the 'big' clubs of England are present.....and then the others who aren't so make the list because of them being geographically close to so many other clubs (Forest, Birmingham)....or seemingly for their bad rep (Millwall, Cardiff). But then on the list of the 'least offensive'.....it is more-or-less some of the smallest clubs in England (hard to evoke hatred for such clubs...Aldershot, York etc.)......yet Fulham, an established Premier League club for many-a-year now....and a capital club to boot, somewhow managed to squeeze into the top ten. Says it all about them. No-one gives a sh*t.

Yup. FMC vs Man City (5-4) in 1986 and ZDS vs Boro (1-0) in 1990.....although you can't really call them major trophies. Nevin was in the 86 side....think he set up two of Speedie's goals.....but he had left by the time we beat Boro in 90. Sold to Everton in 1988. Hasselbaink never won a 'major' trophy with us did he?

Drogba for me.

Yes, it was when he was manager that we started to aim higher. I am only judging him on the on pitch performances under him. With regards to diet, facilities, treatment, training routines etc., sure.....I think it's pretty well documented that Glenn initiated changes when he became boss. But I think it was around this time that English football as a whole started to make these changes. It would have happened regardless within time. Hoddle was probably more of a pioneer than others having been no doubt influenced by his time at Monaco playing under Wenger. That said, I have little doubt that he was probably a fish fingers, chips and beans before a big match merchant before his playing stint in France.

Gotta be Arsenal which is hilarious (sorry, I know that isn't in the spirit of this thread). What about the other Spanish sides other than the El Classico two? Pretty sure Valencia, Atletico Madrid and Sevilla have never won it. All big clubs. Regarding Roma, sure, they're a big club, but I think they only have three Scudettos to their name. Arsenal have 13 domestic titles and 10 (I think) FA Cups.