Cobham

Yep.Came on with a megaphone if I recall correctly. We all sang his name. Pompey claiming something like 400 seats ripped out. Didn't look anything like that to me.

Cheers CB. Great photos of a great day out at Grimsby. Never seen them before. I think they are from the pen to the left of the one in which the overcrowding took place at the start of the match which was a corner section. I was in there. It was Mickey Greenaway, sitting in the seats to the right, right next to the overcrowding who (IMO) saved us from things getting more serious. It was he who persuaded the Old Bill that we weren't trying to invade the pitch to cause trouble but were just trying to save ourselves. At that stage those who could we were singing "let us out, let us out, let us out" and the OB were truncheoning anyone who tried to climb up the fence to get out. MG explained what was happening and got the coppers to open one of the gates into the seating section. From there I went and watched the match in the other (empty) corner section to the left of the pitch.

I was 23. Missed the match as I was spending the season as a ski bum working in Whistler, Canada. Now I'm 48 and living back in Whistler again. Here's a nice little quiz from yesterday's Mirror about what's happened since they last beat us at home: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/row-zed/tottenham-v-chelsea-things-happen-4742980 My favourite game against them in that time? Has to be the "normal service has resumed" at the Lane. Incredible atmosphere that day, very old school, very intense. Mind you the 4-0 at home a few days later was pretty sweet too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fl63B7a5-4

Missed the commentary. What did Quinn say? And anyone know how he knew him?

The notion that football is all about entertainment. It's not. It's a sport. It's about winning. The rules are very clear on this, the team with the most goals at the end of the match wins. How those goals are scored and what happens in between them is immaterial. Completely and utterly immaterial. There are no extra points for being 'entertaining'. Now I'm not saying I don't like 'good' football. I enjoy it as much as the next man but it seems to have become something that people expect as a right when they watch a match rather than as a nice bonus. It's talked about as if it's the most important aspect of football. It's not. Winning is. If you want to be entertained go to the cinema or the theatre. This has become most nauseating when it comes to the so called 'neutral' or the 'purist'. You know the type - post 1990 World Cup (or worse still, the post 1996 Euro) JCLs, the Nick Hornby reading chattering classes, the tiki-taka loving, Barca shirt wearing twats who criticise anything that doesn't involve 70% possession and 'pretty football'. I don't give a damn if you enjoyed the match or not, my team won. I'm a football fan, your pleasure or displeasure in my team team's performance doesn't interest me. Just as I don't care whether your favourite team (if you even have one) played wonderful football. I only care how the result affects Chelsea.

RIP John Neal. A great manager. So many legendary games, so many amazing memories. Come along, come along, come along and sing this song. We're the boys in blue in Division Two and we won't be here too long. Johnny Neal's blue and white army!

Modern stadiums. Soulless bowls, practically every one of them. Resurrect Archibald Leitch!

Not being able to pay on the day.

I'm almost a little disappointed this info. I'd always heard it was SH who organised the 'visit' to the Iranian Embassy on a whim with the intention of ending the siege. Chelsea fans rescue hostages!! Makes for a better story but nice to find out what it was really about I suppose.

Dixon was the target of more than a few for while. When we played Watford away (in the cup I think) at the height of the celery craze he was getting it badly, booing and whatnot. Took a Spurs mate of mine that day and he couldn't understand the vitriol aimed towards him. I was almost embarrassed to be a Chelsea fan that day.

Yep.

Please, please, please don't have a look into it. An accident waiting to happen.

Non 3pm Saturday kick offs and the general moving of KO times to suit Sky and the armchair public with no thought for the match going supporter.

Everton away, the 1-1 draw (March 86?) For some reason we ended up going by National Express instead of the train. Not too bad on the way up but the bus back didn't leave until 9:30pm or something so we had to hang around in Liverpool for a few hours. Not that much fun back then, in fact it was a complete sh*thole. Couldn't see any Chelsea anywhere and the locals were decidedly unfriendly the moment we opened our mouths so figured the best thing to do was to go the cinema and sit through Back to the Future again. We sat there playing 'I-spy' waiting for the film to start. "I spy with my little eye something beginning with M.S.G". Mongy Scouse git". "Correct, your turn". Got the bus back and arrived at Kings X about 1am (not the bus station near Victoria for some reason). Sat up in the station until the tube opened and caught that back to Waterloo to catch the first train home about 24 hrs after we'd first left. That sort of time commitment was not unusual watching Chelsea away back then. Portsmouth away 1984, the near promotion game when we gave Alan Biley the worst stick over his Rod Stewart haircut. Three of us borrowed a mate's Ford Escort for the night. It was his pride and joy. Last thing he said was "please look after it and don't drive too fast". Needless to say the engine seized outside Petersfield. Every second car that night was Chelsea with scarves flying out of the windows so we tried hitching. Took ages until these two Irish fellas took pity on us and picked us up. Ended up in this huge Chelsea traffic jam outside Portsmouth and crawled into town. We made it just in time for kick off and agreed to meet at the car after the match. Well the match was a right laugh, one of my all time favourites. When it was over I presume the Irish lads went back to their car immediately. I have to admit we were having too much of a good time on the terracing. Anyone remember the chant of "what's the time? what's the time? what's the time?" as someone spun the hands of the big clock at the back of the terrace? Then passed various bits of the clock over our heads as it was slowly dismantled and thrown on to the pitch. (OK that's pretty moronic when you look at it in print I admit but it was fecking funny at the time). Anyway, we finally left the ground (police held us in?) and couldn't find the car so we figured they'd left so we bunked the train to London instead along with just about everyone else. It was rammed. Got back about mignight and then got my dear old mum to drive us back down to Petersfield and tow my mate's car back to his house in Molesey. We left it their on his drive about 3am hoping he'd somehow think it had nothing to do with us. No, that didn't really pan out.

Love this thread. Some minor discomforts here, bigger adventures to follow. Had the misfortune to be on at least a couple of specials that got bricked coming back from Manc land or the Scousers. Can't remember exact details, though it seemed to happen almost every time. Usually someone would be looking out and give the call just before it happened giving time to take cover. One time though a half brick came through unannounced and smacked really hard into the seat head height on the other side of the aisle from me. Luckily that was the one seat that was empty. There was a girl sitting in the next one over, she was extremely lucky. Sometimes if the train was totally packed I used to go and sit in the goods car. Talk about a cattle truck! Stick a paper down on the always dirty, dusty and greasy floor and it was reasonably comfortable although a bit hard on the arse. Defo did that coming back from Grimsby. I remember one time, I think it was Newcastle, when we pulled into a station alongside the 125 somewhere like Nottingham. I was sitting their with my hoard of Coke cans and Mars Bars from the 'buffet' (run by Gary Staker and Breda Lee?) and ended up selling some of them through that small sliding window at the top to the blokes on the 125. Their train had run out of any form of food or drink as soon as it left Newcastle. It wasn't often that we were better off on the specials. I wasn't on that coach back from Sunderland with the broken windows thank Christ but I was sat next to a fat c@@t who ate food from his Tesco bag all the way up there and never said a word to me for 6 hours. I've seldom been as disappointed as getting back on the coach only to see that everyone had gone back to the same seats. Fatty ate all the way back too and was his same chatty self. That was a thoroughly uncomfortable and depressing journey. Also remember an Everton night game when I'd got the 125 with my girlfriend only to have the OB refuse let us go back to the station. They marched us to Edgehill and stuck us on a four carriage cattle truck with what looked like our mob.

If that was the best they could do I would hate to see the worst! It was an absolute fiasco. A shambles. It was there for the taking and they absolutely blew it. A total and utter balls up on behalf of the club. Like I think CB mentioned I was a little surprised that someone's head didn't roll for that (or for the appointment of the FSW while we're at it but apparently you can cock up massively with impunity over some issues at Chelsea but not others). Buck and Gourlay were obviously completely out of touch with the issue and oblivious to what they were dealing with. They ended up just getting it plain wrong. Buck's supposed to be some hot shot lawyer? On that evidence I wouldn't want him representing me. He completely misread the jury. I honestly think that just a little less arrogance and a little more sympathy to most people's feelings over the matter would have won the day. Even a change in demeanour on the day might have worked wonders. I'm really not sure they needed any more than that. But they thought they had it won beforehand, I heard Gourlay say that to someone at the end of the meeting. They were both genuinely taken aback and surprised and that says to me that they were woefully out of touch with the feelings of many of those who attended. Of course offering me a brick as well would have helped.

I should just say one more thing, I haven't addressed the Scouse objection that our ground was bigger and that this helped our average attendances be higher. There is probably some truth in this and I admit I haven't fully checked it out myself yet. I will get around to it though but it might take some time. However, I will say this, my suspicion is that it doesn't affect things that much at least not as much as one might think. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, we only got those mega-high attendances (70k +) about once a season and certainly not every year. They weren't a regular occurrence, it wasn't like it happened three, four or five times a season and skewed our average upwards. Secondly, the way you work out how this affects average attendances between two teams is by looking at your rivals maximum capacity, taking the numbers above that maximum that Chelsea got and dividing that number by the number of games that season. i.e. Arsenal got 72,500 against Spurs in 1921 so Highbury could hold that many (at least). Given that they could get that number in their ground the advantage we had over them was only the difference between 72,500 and whatever we got. Obviously, in this case, we wouldn't gain much advantage over Arsenal with a crowd in the 70,000s. It's not our fault they couldn't squeeze that many in again until 1935 when they got 73,295 against Sunderland. So if we got 76k against Spurs in 1920 it only gave us an advantage over the season of somewhere between 2,705 (76k - 73,295) and 3,500 (76k - 72,500). This is only 167 or 128 people per match (21 home games in those days). It's true that Anfield didn't have a very high capacity (it's highest crowd was 58,757 against us in 1949/50 though I don't know if that was its absolute maximum) so any seasons with attendances higher than this at the Bridge would have to be subject to checking how this affected our average compared to theirs but, again, I don't think it would destroy the obviously higher attendances I outlined above. I guess we shall see. Sometime. Later. I've done enough for now.

Liverpool. Last one for today. This is the big one. And it might be enlightening given that they are the chief culprits of the 'history' stuff. Pre-WWI (10 seasons) I suppose we should give them some credit for beating us in our very first season (1905-6) when they finished as champions. However, for the next 9 seasons we had a higher average every year. Overall our attendances averaged 26,145, theirs were 19,438. No history whatsoever. Between the Wars (20 seasons) Their average attendance over that period was 28,677, ours was 32,677. During this time they were champions in '22 and '23 and finished 4th three times. We came 3rd in 1920 and 8th was our next best finish in 1936. We also suffered relegation and spent 6 seasons in Div 2. Just in case any Scouser reads this and thinks maybe we got some really high averages for a few seasons which skews those overall averages in our favour, let's look at who comes top each year. They got a higher average gate a total of only 5 times out of those 20 or 25% of the time: 1923 (When they were champions again) they got 33,495 for the highest average in the League and we got 30,000 finishing in 19th place for the 5th best average (3,495 difference). 1925 After having been champions in '22 and '23, they were 4th in 1925 so this was a good period for them and they got 29,185. We finished 5th in Div 2 and were one place behind them in the averages (3rd to their 2nd highest in the league) with 28,975 (a massive 210 per game difference!) 1930 They finished 12th and got 30,219 for the 5th highest average, we finished 2nd in Div 2 with 27,799 for the 6th highest average (2,420 difference). 1934 They finished 18th and got 29,429 for the 5th highest average and we finished 19th in the league and got 29,183 for 6th highest average (246 difference). 1939 They finished 11th and got 31,422 for the 5th highest average, we got 30,999 in 20th place for 7th highest (423 difference). Obviously the other 15 seasons we had the higher average, that includes four years in Div 2 and a relegation year! Post WWII 1947-1955 (9 seasons) Chelsea's average attendance 44,386, Liverpool's 41,504. They had the higher attendance in 1947 when they again won the championship. Their average attendance was the second highest for that year at 45,732. We came 15th in the League and had the third highest average at 44,550. They also had a higher average in 1950 when they were the fifth highest with 45,783 and we were the tenth with 42,238. Of course, as you might have guessed, they again finished above us coming 8th (and reaching the Cup Final) to our 13th. That was it. The other 7 years we had the higher attendances. The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that the 8 times they finished above us in attendances between 1906 and 1955 (39 seasons) they had also finished above us, often well above us, in the League. Post WWII 1956-1962 (7 seasons) Here things start to change. Strangely, having won our first league title in 1955, our attendances began to drop. I don't know why. Perhaps one of the older forum members might be able to tell us? Also, you have to give credit here to the Dippers, their attendances seemed to harden and become more consistent even though they were relegated in 1954 and stayed down until 62. Their gates in Div 2 were pretty respectable (having said that they only just missed promotion every year but the first) and so we shared the higher attendance 4 times each. Our average attendance over this period was 34,536, their's was 35,329 so they were ahead of us for the first time. However, put the two post war periods together and for the 15 seasons between 1947 and 1962 our average was 39,789 and their's was 38,622. Nonetheless you can see a slight swing towards them from 1956 onwards. Before that we were easily the better supported club. 1956 was the first time they had a higher attendance from a lower league position. Until then we had done that to them many, many times. I would say 1956 is the turning point but the consolidation came a little later. We all know what happened next. Shankly joined Liverpool in Dec 1959, took them up in 1962 and by 1964 they had won the League, Beatlemania was in full flow and Liverpool was the place everyone wanted to be a part of. The rest, as they say in Scouseland, is history. What came before that has been airbrushed out. Personally I wouldn't accept them as the definitively better supported team until 1963.

Well at the risk of boring everyone I thought I'd look at our Cockney friends over at the Boleyn Grounds. I knew they weren't great but it still quite surprised me to see that they didn't manage to average over 30k until 1969 (post the '66 WC Cup and all that "we won the WC bollocks"). In fact until the Premiership era the best years for the Hammers were 1967-1975. Before that they were awful in terms of attendance with gates mostly in the high teens and low twenty thousands. They are one of the few teams who have had better support in the modern era. 1993 (post 1990 WC) in Div 2 saw them get only 16,001 for a promotion season. Only just over 17k for an opening home match against Charlton pretty much set the standard for the rest of the season. Other poor attendances were 12k v Notts County, Bristol City and Peterborough, 11k v Watford, Derby and Oxford, 10k v Sunderland and 6,981 against Crewe in the League Cup. Was the ground being redeveloped? Weirdly they also only got 15k v Millwall. Now they'd just got 25k against Wolves and Newcastle in the weeks previous to that. Couldn't have been scared could they?

Using Englishman's idea of overall position in a season again it looks like 1979 to 1996 is the aberration. These were the years when we were outside the top ten best supported clubs on a regular basis. Hardly surprising really though considering what was going on on the pitch and with the club as a whole. We were never below the 6th best supported team in the land (and most often 1st, 2nd or 3rd) from 1908 until 1939 (when we were 7th best supported in a year when we nearly got relegated). After the war until our first championship in 1955 was not quite as good but still very respectable with only a 10th in 1950 being below the top 7 (we had a 1st, 2nd and two 4th bests in that time). Between '55 and '72 we held our own pretty well but it's noticeable that we start to drop down a little to outside the top 5 but inside the top 10. What I think happened is that some teams that we often or usually would have finished above were now too successful for us to compete with e.g. Everton, Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal, Man Utd. The top five had now become a bit of a closed shop (the so called 'Big Five'). However, when we were (relatively) successful we did, just, break the top 5 again ('67, '70', '71, '72) and sometimes even when we weren't successful ('59 and '60). But we also had our first 'outside the top ten' seasons since 1906 (11th in '57 and '62). Mid-70s is where things really start to go wrong but this was partly because of ground redevelopment, at least at first. In fact i wonder if we never really recovered from this? We dropped outside the top ten best supported clubs during this period (1976 being very poor at under 19k average and only the 25th best supported team in the country). Between 1979 and 1996 we seem to consolidate somewhere in the teens in terms of average support and this is of course what everyone remembers along with our all time lows of 28th and 27th (worth noting our league positions those years were 34th and 40th). Then fortunes gradually improved and from 1997 until now we've been back in the top ten and mostly (just) in the top 6. Of course the overall averages have us as 5th so top 6 is about right I think.

Another good way of looking at it Englishman. A lot of the clubs that sing the "where were you when you were s**t" song have never even been in the top ten themselves in any year. It really shows that, relatively speaking we weren't that much worse than anyone else.

Cheers Den. You know those averages you posted for us between 1906 and 1978? I just did 1909 to 1979 (60 seasons) and got the following Arsenal 34,795, Spurs, 34,551 and Chelsea 33,927. Behind those two but still very, very respectable considering the respective success of the clubs. I'm wondering if you averaged it out over 70 years? I took off ten because of the war years when the league didn't run. When I did it over 70 years I got 29,080 which is much closer to what you got. [Edit - I did it from 1909 because the Euro Football Stats site that I used doesn't have Spurs attendances from 1906-08 for some reason. If they did I could have gone back to 1906 and we would have been even closer to the others because we were the best supported back then. Isn't that ironic? We were best supported the furthest back. But we have no history!]

It's like a religion up there. Part Two. Cherry picking a few years for Sun'land. In both 1926 and 1927 they finished 3rd in the League and got averages of 21,339 and 18,122 respectively. Note that we were in Div 2 and got 32,355 in '26 (the highest in the country that season) and 29,861 in '27 (7th best). In fact the only time they averaged over 30k in a season before the war (30,378 to be precise) was in 1936 when they were champions (we got 34,977 while finishing in 8th place, 3rd best support in the country). Two years before this when finishing 6th they got 18,269. Not fickle at all. Cherry picking a few more years. 1971 15,780 in Div 2 1972 15,906 in Div 2 1983 17,370 in Div 1 (CFC, 12,672 in Div 2 relegation battle) 1984 16,180 in Div 1 1987 13,607 in Div 2 1989 14,878 in Div 2 1994 16,934 in Div 2 1995 15,344 in Div 2 and then averaged over 46k in 2001 and 2002 just 6/7 years later. Just like a religion.

It's like a religion up there, I tells ya. Newcastle Utd, always get big crowds those Geordies. Now I'm not going to say that Newcastle haven't had great crowds, they obviously have. They were the best supported club in the country until we came along and they had some truly massive averages after the war (during a period of success of course). Despite that they were, in general, below us I would say (certainly 20s, 30s and 60s) and by the 1980s were suffering like everyone else. In 1980 they averaged 16,001 and a year later they got just over 17k. However, the worst for them I think is 1990/91 when they got an enormous 16,834 for the season when finishing 11th in Div 2. Remember this was after the 1990 WC, hooliganism was on the wane and crowds were on the rise again across the country. This is most definitely not the mid-80s period when just about every club in the country was experiencing their lowest crowds since the 1910s. Their first three league games showed the post 1990 effect with very respectable crowds in the 23k range. Then the realisation that they were s**t sunk in and the crowds dropped. During Oct and April they were getting between 12k and 17k and sunk to a low of 10,004 against Oxford on 10th April 1991. I'll state again, this was after the 1990 WC. Exactly 10 years later they were getting 51k as an average. It's like a religion up there.