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Don't You Just Know it?
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THE 99-POINT PROMOTION - PART ONE
Twenty-five years ago today, on 22 April 1989, Chelsea were crowned Second Division champions. A promotion vital to the club's existence had been achieved convincingly with a huge points and goals tally.
To celebrate the anniversary, the official Chelsea website this week tells the story of the 1988/89 campaign and speaks to then manager Bobby Campbell and some of the key players involved…
It is probably the simple fact the club should never have been in the situation in the first place; that before the campaign began, success was expected more than anticipated; which contrasted the Second Division championship season of 1988/89 with the one earlier that decade. However its importance in the story of Chelsea Football Club should never be underestimated.
Five seasons before and following straight after the worst in the club's history when measured by league performance, a remarkable rebirth that owed much to shrewd transfer activity by venerable manager John Neal had taken place, with the 'Dixon-Speedie-Nevin-era' Blues thrilling the Chelsea support as they took the club up as division winners after five years in the lower league doldrums.
Two sixth-place finishes in the top flight followed but by the end of that second season back the results were starting to slip, with former player and coach John Hollins now in charge due to Neal's ill health.
By the 1986/87 season the wheels were seriously loosened and the following year they properly came off, although on the face of it, it was hard to see why. There was plenty of quality in the team, many of the players still the same ones who had been challenging for the league title just two years earlier.
The relegation in one way felt unjust too. Chelsea finished fourth from bottom yet this was a time of adjustment in English football with the 22-team First Division in the process of being cut to 20. We were required to contest a two-legged play-off for survival/promotion against Middlesbrough, who had the momentum of a relatively successful season in Division Two compared with the Blues' confidence-sapped stumble to the end of the campaign.
A 1-0 win at the Bridge in the second leg was not enough to overcome the 2-0 deficit from the away game and in May 1988 we were relegated. The clichéd side 'too good to go down' had done just that.
'I had a strange sensation because when we got relegated, straight after the game I was told I was in the England squad for the 1988 European Championships,' remembers Tony Dorigo, left-back, top appearance maker and Player of the Year in the relegation season, having been a big new signing the summer before.
'All of a sudden, from the moment of my worst feeling I got told this news, it was odd. It was not great.'
Relegation never comes at a good time but for a club that was still recovering from near bankruptcy a few years earlier and faced much uncertainty over the future of Stamford Bridge, it was a grave turn of events. We could ill-afford to stay down for long.
Former Fulham and Portsmouth manager Bobby Campbell (pictured right) was brought in to work under Hollins during the relegation season after Hollins's assistant Ernie Walley went, but in the March and with no upturn in results, Hollins was sacked by then chairman Ken Bates and Campbell was in full control of the team.
When survival from that position proved too much, Campbell's most important job was to prevent an exodus of the best players. Pat Nevin had not been offered a new contract and by then a move to Everton for a then-record fee for Chelsea seemed already too far down the pipeline to be halted, but internationals or soon-to-be-internationals such as Dorigo, Kerry Dixon, Gordon Durie and Steve Clarke were retained for the fight back.
And in came two seasoned campaigners. Former England international Graham Roberts was bought from Rangers to add steel to the defence, and Wales international Peter Nicholas came in from another Scottish club, Aberdeen, to do a similar job in midfield.
'Graham Roberts had the right attitude that meant the supporters loved him and he loved them, and he was tremendous,' recalls Campbell, speaking to the official Chelsea website and looking back quarter of a century
'He provided leadership on the pitch and off the pitch, and he was magnificent. And Peter Nicholas was a real man too.'
'Nicho was someone to calm things down in the middle,' adds Dorigo, 'and it was that added experience that we needed. It was slightly different playing in the Second Division to the First, it was going to be a bit more frenetic and you had to show your quality but at the same time you had to fight, and they really brought that physical element to the team.'
'We had good players already and these two extra special men came in and we went zip,' says Campbell, 'and to cut a long story short, we had practically won the league by Christmas.'
However the longer version of the story deserves telling too, as it was far from plain sailing initially. The team that eventually won the division by a mighty margin of 17 points collected just three from our first six games, winning none.
The first six matches at Stamford Bridge were played in front of closed terraces (as can be seen in the picture below); only seated areas in the East and West Stands were occupied; a sanction following crowd trouble at the play-off match against Middlesbrough that concluded the previous season.
As a consequence, those early home attendances were around the 8,000-mark. Major players Dixon and Dorigo missed the first month of the season through injury and creative Mickey Hazard wouldn't appear until February.
To complete the miserable opening to our attempt to bounce back, team captain Joe McLaughlin, low on confidence from the previous season's travails, made a mistake in the first game, picked up an injury and reacted to some stick from the crowd with a gesture. Privately, he was dealing with tragedy with a newly born son surviving just nine days.
McLaughlin (pictured jumping below), who had been one of the great successes of the previous promotion year, had a break from the team and Roberts was handed the armband.
'I made him captain quickly because I saw what I had bought and I saw that he was a leader off the pitch and at the training ground. He is what every manager wants in his team,' says Campbell.
'Joe was a lovely lad and he was one of those boys who hadn't wanted to be in the Second Division but I said no, Joe your future is here. His confidence had gone at the start but by end of the season he was playing as well as he ever did, he was terrific and this happens.
McLaughlin (pictured jumping below), who had been one of the great successes of the previous promotion year, had a break from the team and Roberts was handed the armband.
'I made him captain quickly because I saw what I had bought and I saw that he was a leader off the pitch and at the training ground. He is what every manager wants in his team,' says Campbell.
'Joe was a lovely lad and he was one of those boys who hadn't wanted to be in the Second Division but I said no, Joe your future is here. His confidence had gone at the start but by end of the season he was playing as well as he ever did, he was terrific and this happens.
'Players go to bed and they wake up with the same amount of skill, but sometimes they don't wake up with the same attitude and it is up to the manager to spot this and know what buttons to press to get that person to perform to his maximum again.'
There are plenty of examples where a chance happening, a stroke of luck, seems to turn long-term fortunes for the better, and that was certainly the case for Chelsea in the early autumn of 1988.
The team went to old rivals Leeds for the seventh game of the season where the opening goal came from long-serving midfielder John Bumstead.
'We were fifth from bottom and there were rumblings about changing the manager, you know what it is like, and it was a bit of a flukey goal,' remembers Bumstead.
'I went to head the ball, I got nowhere near it and I fell on my stomach, and I think [Leeds defender] Noel Blake headed it back into my heel as my leg was flicking up and it flew into the net, but it doesn't matter how it goes in.
'Gordon Durie scored a good second goal but I think he handled it as he controlled it as well, so we had two bits of good luck and we just kicked on from there. We knew we were a good side, we just needed a little bit of luck to get a good win, because Leeds were a strong side, especially playing there.'
'Only a player like John would have scored a goal like that,' said Campbell at the time,' because he was brave enough to dive in with the header.'
The victory was Chelsea's first at Elland Road for 52 years.
- In part two to follow, we look back at the Blues of 88/89 hitting top form and embarking on a record-breaking run, recall a big mid-season signing, and speak to topscorer Kerry Dixon.
THE 99-POINT PROMOTION - PART ONE
Twenty-five years ago today, on 22 April 1989, Chelsea were crowned Second Division champions. A promotion vital to the club's existence had been achieved convincingly with a huge points and goals tally.
To celebrate the anniversary, the official Chelsea website this week tells the story of the 1988/89 campaign and speaks to then manager Bobby Campbell and some of the key players involved…
It is probably the simple fact the club should never have been in the situation in the first place; that before the campaign began, success was expected more than anticipated; which contrasted the Second Division championship season of 1988/89 with the one earlier that decade. However its importance in the story of Chelsea Football Club should never be underestimated.
Five seasons before and following straight after the worst in the club's history when measured by league performance, a remarkable rebirth that owed much to shrewd transfer activity by venerable manager John Neal had taken place, with the 'Dixon-Speedie-Nevin-era' Blues thrilling the Chelsea support as they took the club up as division winners after five years in the lower league doldrums.
Two sixth-place finishes in the top flight followed but by the end of that second season back the results were starting to slip, with former player and coach John Hollins now in charge due to Neal's ill health.
By the 1986/87 season the wheels were seriously loosened and the following year they properly came off, although on the face of it, it was hard to see why. There was plenty of quality in the team, many of the players still the same ones who had been challenging for the league title just two years earlier.
The relegation in one way felt unjust too. Chelsea finished fourth from bottom yet this was a time of adjustment in English football with the 22-team First Division in the process of being cut to 20. We were required to contest a two-legged play-off for survival/promotion against Middlesbrough, who had the momentum of a relatively successful season in Division Two compared with the Blues' confidence-sapped stumble to the end of the campaign.
A 1-0 win at the Bridge in the second leg was not enough to overcome the 2-0 deficit from the away game and in May 1988 we were relegated. The clichéd side 'too good to go down' had done just that.
'I had a strange sensation because when we got relegated, straight after the game I was told I was in the England squad for the 1988 European Championships,' remembers Tony Dorigo, left-back, top appearance maker and Player of the Year in the relegation season, having been a big new signing the summer before.
'All of a sudden, from the moment of my worst feeling I got told this news, it was odd. It was not great.'
Relegation never comes at a good time but for a club that was still recovering from near bankruptcy a few years earlier and faced much uncertainty over the future of Stamford Bridge, it was a grave turn of events. We could ill-afford to stay down for long.
Former Fulham and Portsmouth manager Bobby Campbell (pictured right) was brought in to work under Hollins during the relegation season after Hollins's assistant Ernie Walley went, but in the March and with no upturn in results, Hollins was sacked by then chairman Ken Bates and Campbell was in full control of the team.
When survival from that position proved too much, Campbell's most important job was to prevent an exodus of the best players. Pat Nevin had not been offered a new contract and by then a move to Everton for a then-record fee for Chelsea seemed already too far down the pipeline to be halted, but internationals or soon-to-be-internationals such as Dorigo, Kerry Dixon, Gordon Durie and Steve Clarke were retained for the fight back.
And in came two seasoned campaigners. Former England international Graham Roberts was bought from Rangers to add steel to the defence, and Wales international Peter Nicholas came in from another Scottish club, Aberdeen, to do a similar job in midfield.
'Graham Roberts had the right attitude that meant the supporters loved him and he loved them, and he was tremendous,' recalls Campbell, speaking to the official Chelsea website and looking back quarter of a century
'He provided leadership on the pitch and off the pitch, and he was magnificent. And Peter Nicholas was a real man too.'
'Nicho was someone to calm things down in the middle,' adds Dorigo, 'and it was that added experience that we needed. It was slightly different playing in the Second Division to the First, it was going to be a bit more frenetic and you had to show your quality but at the same time you had to fight, and they really brought that physical element to the team.'
'We had good players already and these two extra special men came in and we went zip,' says Campbell, 'and to cut a long story short, we had practically won the league by Christmas.'
However the longer version of the story deserves telling too, as it was far from plain sailing initially. The team that eventually won the division by a mighty margin of 17 points collected just three from our first six games, winning none.
The first six matches at Stamford Bridge were played in front of closed terraces (as can be seen in the picture below); only seated areas in the East and West Stands were occupied; a sanction following crowd trouble at the play-off match against Middlesbrough that concluded the previous season.
As a consequence, those early home attendances were around the 8,000-mark. Major players Dixon and Dorigo missed the first month of the season through injury and creative Mickey Hazard wouldn't appear until February.
To complete the miserable opening to our attempt to bounce back, team captain Joe McLaughlin, low on confidence from the previous season's travails, made a mistake in the first game, picked up an injury and reacted to some stick from the crowd with a gesture. Privately, he was dealing with tragedy with a newly born son surviving just nine days.
McLaughlin (pictured jumping below), who had been one of the great successes of the previous promotion year, had a break from the team and Roberts was handed the armband.
'I made him captain quickly because I saw what I had bought and I saw that he was a leader off the pitch and at the training ground. He is what every manager wants in his team,' says Campbell.
'Joe was a lovely lad and he was one of those boys who hadn't wanted to be in the Second Division but I said no, Joe your future is here. His confidence had gone at the start but by end of the season he was playing as well as he ever did, he was terrific and this happens.
McLaughlin (pictured jumping below), who had been one of the great successes of the previous promotion year, had a break from the team and Roberts was handed the armband.
'I made him captain quickly because I saw what I had bought and I saw that he was a leader off the pitch and at the training ground. He is what every manager wants in his team,' says Campbell.
'Joe was a lovely lad and he was one of those boys who hadn't wanted to be in the Second Division but I said no, Joe your future is here. His confidence had gone at the start but by end of the season he was playing as well as he ever did, he was terrific and this happens.
'Players go to bed and they wake up with the same amount of skill, but sometimes they don't wake up with the same attitude and it is up to the manager to spot this and know what buttons to press to get that person to perform to his maximum again.'
There are plenty of examples where a chance happening, a stroke of luck, seems to turn long-term fortunes for the better, and that was certainly the case for Chelsea in the early autumn of 1988.
The team went to old rivals Leeds for the seventh game of the season where the opening goal came from long-serving midfielder John Bumstead.
'We were fifth from bottom and there were rumblings about changing the manager, you know what it is like, and it was a bit of a flukey goal,' remembers Bumstead.
'I went to head the ball, I got nowhere near it and I fell on my stomach, and I think [Leeds defender] Noel Blake headed it back into my heel as my leg was flicking up and it flew into the net, but it doesn't matter how it goes in.
'Gordon Durie scored a good second goal but I think he handled it as he controlled it as well, so we had two bits of good luck and we just kicked on from there. We knew we were a good side, we just needed a little bit of luck to get a good win, because Leeds were a strong side, especially playing there.'
'Only a player like John would have scored a goal like that,' said Campbell at the time,' because he was brave enough to dive in with the header.'
The victory was Chelsea's first at Elland Road for 52 years.
- In part two to follow, we look back at the Blues of 88/89 hitting top form and embarking on a record-breaking run, recall a big mid-season signing, and speak to topscorer Kerry Dixon.
