BumsteadCFC

Remember that game well. We were up 2-0 and Dixon had a chance to make it 3 with a one on one but shot straight at the keeper (Lukic?). Like you we got there too late to get in the Chelsea so ended up in the Arsenal side of the Clock end.

Yeah, his wife was pregnant at the time of his move and that was the excuse he gave..........

Without a doubt, throughout the Bates era Chelsea were the most expensive team to watch in England bar none. From a value for money point of view (if you looked at the thing from the perspective of "rational consumer" not football fan) watching Chelsea was not a good investment of your money. The ground was probably the most run down in the country, pitch miles away from the fans and the football was at its worst horrendous. Ian Porterfield era was probably as low as it got in terms of the quality of the team. As someone said from 87-93 virtually all of our properly talented players left (Durie, Dorigo, Speedie, Nevin, Townsend etc.) and we had some proper crap in the team - Cascarino, Joe Allon, Mick Harford and the like. Getting Hoddle in the summer of 1993 really was the catalyst that gave us some credibility and made it obvious that the club was heading in a clear upward path.

Hope he pulls through, sad to think a player who played as long as he did (and probably kept himself in decent nick) can be in such dire straits.

Haven't been on in years, just logged in as I saw Butch is in critical condition and came across this thread........... Superbly researched, interesting read. One thing to mention (that I don't think has been mentioned) is the effect of people leaving London during/after WW2 and the white flight phenomenon. During our first 50 years no doubt 90% of our support came from within a 5-10 mile radius of the ground, by the time our home gates were at their low ebbs in the 80s and early 90s I would imagine a lot more of our support were travelling from the home counties/satellite towns of London with their parents/grandparents having moved out of London. Thats always been a theory of mine as to why a lot of our midweek gates were often so sh*t compared to Saturday gates - would be interesting to do a comparison. Couple that with the rise of TV football (albeit I know there wasn't the saturation coverage of today) there wasn't much incentive for kids to support their local side when they could support Liverpool. Im 39 and one of those weird early memories that stuck in my mind of going to Chelsea was walking through Eel Brook common en route to a game (mid 80s) and seeing a lad playing football in the Crown paints Liverpool kit.

The old man turns 61 in a couple of weeks, he's not online but I know he'd say the MCreadie promotion winning side was his, He's been following Chelsea since 67 but he loved that side the most because of the fact that most of the players were Chelsea youngsters, Finnestone, Langley, Wicks, Wilkins bros. and the rest. I think Micky Droy is to this day his favourite Chelsea player.

Me too, I'd say broadly 88-92. Personally liked most of the youth that came through the club around this time: Le Saux, Stuart, Myers, Lee, Cundy, Matthew etc.

Thanks mate, I'll look it up. Haven't been on here in a few years.

To answer the question of the thread even at our lowest ebbs we have been capable of one off good performances in big games (as others have mentioned Liverpool in the Cup twice, only team to beat Arsenal in the league in 91/92, thrashed Spurs 3-0 in rumbleows the year they won the FA Cup, done the double on Man U in 94) but never able to string results together and maddeningly inconsistent. The worst thing about the sh*t years were the cup defeats, every year we would lose to some poxy lower division team (remember we lost to sunderland in 84 and 92 when they were a second division side and we lost to sheff wed in 91 when they were in div 2 as well. Reading 87 milk cup, scarboro 89, bristol city 1990, barnsley, oxford, boro 88 playoff game, you name it we managed to lose to all these mobs and some of them were humiliating defeats and all.

Think that and the West Ham games was his last appearances in a Chelsea shirt, could be wrong though.

Anyone have an idea where he is imprisoned send correspondence to? I know he's fallen on hard times and was gonna send him a letter to keep his morale up while inside. Cheers.

This is the part of the deal that makes no sense to me. Mata doesn't fit in with Mourinho's plans? Fine. Wants to move to another club? I get it, but why would we do business with Manchester United? They are currently in an historically weak position, the biggest crisis they have had in generations, certainly since the late 80s with a new manager and an ailing and flawed squad. We should be going for their jugular but instead we have gifted them a lifeline as you say. I can't take a single crumb of comfort in the amount of money we made on his sale because frankly we have pissed far more money up the wall on players who didn't do 10% of what Juan did for us on the pitch. I trust Mourinho implicitly but as others have said I can't help thinking that we have made a big, big mistake that will haunt us for years to come.

Roman doesn't have the patience for the long game so its all a moot point really, lets not delude ourselves that he would have been satisfied with anything other than silverware. Anyway, in all probability we would not have won the second leg against Napoli and then gone on to win the Champions League. Our decision to sack him will always be vindicated by May 19th 2012 regardless of how much success he has in the rest of his managerial career. Sacking Jose, Carlo and Robbie were far bigger errors on the part of the Chelsea board in my opinion.

To those saying "the right man". There is no such thing as the right man for Chelsea, thats why Jose, Butch, Carlo and Robbie were all sacked. Pleasing Roman is impossible.

God knows I don't want to be presumptious here but I think Frank "gets it" in terms of his relationship with the fans and his legacy at Chelsea and knows that going to United/Liverpool/Arse/Spurs would undo a lot of what he did at Chelsea over the past decade. Yes, I stand by that statement going to one of those four (no matter how badly the club treated him) would be a massive slap in the face for the fans and would really sour our opinions of him. We've paid his wages for almost 12 years now going to one of those 4 would be massively disrespectful and I think Frank knows that - I hope so anyway!