G. Chelsea History (1984-1988)

[loz]

Chelsea History (1984-1988)

Written by Loz in October 2009

1984/85 Season

Chelsea’s return to the top flight was one of mixed emotions for John Neal. During the game against Grimsby which clinched promotion he was taken ill and was diagnosed with heart problems. He underwent surgery during the summer prior to the 1984/85 season with Ian McNeill and John Hollins taking responsibility for much of the managerial tasks during the season. Given that we had just been promoted the saloon doors at the Bridge were relatively quiet. Doug Rougvie, a man whose smile parent would use to scare young children to behave well, arrived from Aberdeen whilst Clive Walker departed for Sunderland and Tony McAndrew joined Middlesbrough not long after the season started.

The fixture list decided to welcome us back to the top flight gently. An opening day away fixture at Highbury! The Chelsea away support was there in numbers as 15,000 Blues packed the Clock End and entertained the masses with a variety of ‘family’ ditties that you probably haven’t heard Thora Hird whistling during ‘Songs of Praise’. Arsenal took the lead through Paul Mariner but before the Gooners could bore us into submission with monotonous chants that would feature heavily in their later years under George Graham we struck back through the man, the legend, the god, the divine being and universal life force that is Kerry Dixon. The game ended 1-1 and set us up nicely for an impressive start to the season.

We were soon in the dizzy position of 6th spot after impressive results including turning over the bin dippers (who were the current title holders) 3-1. Chelsea, if nothing else, have always been a team with the ability to ride the wave of success for just long enough to work out how to screw things up. If signing Darren Wood was not one of those moments then I am still 17, with a head full of hair and considered by the sixth form girls as someone they would love to be tied down and spanked by. We also brought in Keith Jones and Gordon Davies although Davies would see his first team opportunities limited to those games that David Speedie was suspended from – so you could say he played plenty!

Despite decent league form, and the Dixon, Speedie and Nevin trio delivering better than Paul Canoville’s midwife of choice, our FA Cup campaign came to a short and sorry end when we were beaten in the fourth round by Millwall who were then languishing in the third division.

Whilst on the topic of the Dixon, Speedie and Nevin triumvirate it is probably worth pointing out that whilst the hate hate relationship between Speedie and Dixon is much documented, what is less talked about is the fact that Nevin and Speedie weren’t exactly bosom buddies either. Nevin has openly stated they hated each other in the early days however he later acknowledged that was partly due to the fact that he thought he could do a better job than Speedie as Dixon’s support striker. Nevin had never been a winger before he joined Chelsea, he had always been a centre forward and, more than anything, he wanted to replicate the rile of his football hero Kenny Dalglish.

We were to take revenge on Millwall in the league cup (at that stage called the Milk Cup) when we knocked them out 4-2 on aggregate in a second round tie however the tie was marred by an incident outside the Den prior to the second leg match. Chelsea reserve centre half Robert Isaac was approached by a gang of Millwall Neanderthals and asked who he supported. Realising the danger he was in, Isaac answered ‘Millwall’ but when questioned he couldn’t name the Millwall goalkeeper and was promptly knifed with the wound starting under his armpit and ending at the base of his spine. He was saved by the protection awarded by the leather jacket he had on although there were initial fears that he had punctured a lung.

We knocked out Walsall and Man City in the next rounds and were drawn to play Sheffield Wednesday in the two legged quarter final. This quarter final was to become a thing of legend in Chelsea’s history, not so much for the overall outcome but for what we witnessed in the second leg and, in particular how it provided a glorious memory for a player whose Chelsea career had more than its fair share of ugly memories.

The first game at the Bridge had ended 1-1 (included a Dixon penalty miss) and at half time in the replay we were 3-0 down and as dead and buried as Gary Glitter’s career as a pantomime villain. Paul Canoville, who had started the game on the bench, was thrown into the fray after the break (replacing the injured Colin Lee) and within seconds of the restart he strolled through the Sheffield Wednesday backline, as if they were at a fancy dress party and had gone as Phillipe Senderos, before pulling it back to 3-1 (alternatively Joey Jones hoofed the ball skyward, the Wednesday centre half cocked up and Canoville nipped in to score – you take your pick).

Canoville then provided the assist for Mickey Thomas to make it 3-2, King Kerry pulled it back to 3-3 and Canoville capped a stunning second half display to put us 4-3 ahead. Bloody magnificent, almost singlehandedly Canoville had got us into the semi final… well that would have been the case if Doug Rougvie hadn’t given away a needless penalty which was converted by Mel Sterland – a player with all the talent of a rusty bicycle.

During the first game Joey Jones recalls hearing a crack and turning round to find Sheffield Wednesday player Andy Blair on the deck. Nobody knows exactly what has happened, except that is the Chelsea fans who start to chant Mickey Thomas’s name. As they are leaving the pitch Jones asks Thomas why he did it and Thomas replies ‘he called my missus a slag.’

Canoville was involved again in the second replay when his corner was converted by Mickey Thomas in the dying minutes to earn us a 2-1 and a semi final against Sunderland.

The semi final was far more forgettable. We lost the first leg 2-0 and although we initially reduced the aggregate deficit to 2-1 in the second leg at the Bridge, we were to be put to the sword by two goals by previous Shed favourite Clive Walker. The Chelsea fans took to Walker’s second goal as well as a scouser takes to a ‘Back to Work’ programme and duly invaded the pitch in an attempt to get grass stains on their knuckles. One fan made a beeline for Walker who was saved from being attacked by Chelsea’s Joey Jones.

As if that wasn’t enough Walker was to then set up Colin West for Sunderland’s third goal (scored at the same time as a copper was chasing a Chelsea fan across the Chelsea penalty area). David Speedie was then sent off and whilst leaving the pitch Clive Walker asked him if he wanted to buy tickets for the final. Speedo promptly went for Walker’s throat and had to be dragged off him. After the match Walker entered the players lounge and started chatting to Mickey Droy Droy’s next job was to pull Speedie off Walker but not before Speedie had twatted him (Walker claims the punch missed. Speedie claims it didn’t. I choose to believe Speedo, mainly because even I could kick Walker’s arse).

Over 100 fans were arrested on the night and Ken Bates blamed them for ruining a £1m shirt sponsorship deal he was negotiating with a company based in the Far East.

Not one to take thing lying down Ken decided that drastic times called for electric measures. Stamford Bridge had already been fitted with fences around the terraces, West and East stand and now these fences had 12 volts pumped through the top section. Enough to stop a pitch invader but insufficient to render then incapable of reproduction. The then Minister of Sport (Neil MacFarlane) and Greater London Council were not impressed by Ken’s approach to tackling hooliganism and we never had to feed the meter to keep the current flowing.

As an aside it should be stated that hooliganism wasn’t just a football problem, it was a society wide problem. An amusing, but very pertinent, conversation between Margaret Thatcher (then, as now, an evil bitch, although a day will come when you are reading this and she will be an evil dead bitch) and Ted Croker (then the secretary of the FA) saw Thatcher ask Croker ‘What are you doing about your hooligans in football?’ Croker turned round and said, ‘Prime Minister, what I want to know is when are you going to get your hooligans out of my football grounds?’

As the season drew to a close European qualification was still in our hands but we lost the final game of the season to Norwich. As it transpired we wouldn’t have played in Europe even if we had won that final game as Liverpool fans rioted at the Heysel stadium and the football world decided it had enough of the idiots of English football and banned the whole country from European football for five years. Heysel was the straw that broke the camel’s back (and it was horrific) but as much as I hate the scousers I can’t lay the whole blame for the European ban on them – this was a ban brought about by cumulative incidents and a number of Chelsea fans have to take a degree of the blame for it as well.

In addition to a respectable league finish for a newly promoted club it is worth pointing out three facts.

1. Kerry Dixon finished the season as a joint Golden Boot winner with Gary Lineker sharing the award – whatever happened to that goofy big eared Midlander?

2. (unless I am mistaken) of all the squad that started that season only one (Mickey Thomas) had ever played in the top flight before.

1985/86 Season

It had become more normal for Chelsea to change managers than it was for David Speedie to say ‘What the f*ck are you looking at?’ We were nothing but consistent and John Hollins, who had been our first team coach for the previous two years, stepped up into the manager’s role when John Neal was ‘promoted’ to a director’s role.

Hollins talked the talk. He stated that he wanted us to be the best team in the land, he added that he wanted us to have the best defence, the best midfield and the best goalscorers.

But did he walk the walk? He signed Jerry Murphy and sold Mickey Droy and Joey Jones – the prosecution rests. (to be fair both of them were approaching the end of their footballing useful lives)

Despite exciting the transfer market as much as Enya excited the grunge music scene we actually started the season in good form. We only lost one game in our opening nine fixtures and Hollins strengthened the squad in September 1985 when he broke the club transfer record to sign Mickey Hazard from arch rivals Spurs. Hazard was considered to be more of a creative midfielder than we had been employing in recent years and his signing was though to signal Hollins’ intention to turn us into a team more ‘pleasing on the eye.’

Just before the end of October we were still in touch with the top of the table (if being 10 points adrift of the top of the table can be considered ‘being in touch’) and had notable 2-1 victories over Arsenal and, then champions, Everton under our belt.

Anyone who thought Hollins was looking to Hazard to change the style of play at the Bridge was soon put right. At the very end of October league leaders Man Utd came to the Bridge. Hazard wasn’t even named in the squad with Hollins explaining that his fitness wasn’t good enough nor was the defensive side to his game. We lost 2-1 despite Utd having been reduced to 10 men late in the first half, the winning goal was scored by future Chelsea striker Mark Hughes.

Most people thought that had put paid to any slender hopes we had of being genuine title challengers however we were unbeaten in our next 11 games (9 wins and 2 draws) and a delightful 2-0 thumping of Tottenham in the Christmas period saw us climb into second spot. By new year Dixon had already scored 21 goals and the three pronged strike force he formed with Nevin and Speedie was terrorising defences and giving us genuine belief that this could be ‘our year’ (it isn’t often that we sound like Liverpool fans in the Premiership years).

Our season was to be struck by an almighty blow when Kerry Dixon suffered a stomach injury in a FA Cup fourth round defeat at the hands of Liverpool. Dixon missed six weeks and in that time we were knocked out of the league cup, drew in the league with Leicester and lost to Oxford. Weather then resulted in us not playing for three weeks and by the time we played again we were 11 points off the top of the table but with four games in hand. We recovered with two wins and two draws but then a further injury blow was to take its toll on our season.

Steady Eddie Niedzwiecki, who had been enjoying consistently superb form all season, suffered a cruciate ligament injury whilst we were one nil up against QPR. Speedie took over in goals and QPR equalised to take a point form the game. That injury ended Eddie’s season and eventually put paid to his career, a very sad ending for a great goalkeeper, in fact my favourite ever Chelsea goalkeeper.

Three days later we were to play two games in two days (makes you wonder if Platini had a say in the fixture lists back then). First we won in the league against Southampton and then the following afternoon we took on Manchester City in the Full Members Cup Final at Wembley. 67,236 people showed up to watch the final of World football’s most prestigious tournament and we started the match with a less than fit Colin Lee deputising for the injured Kerry Dixon. That may not have suited most Chelsea fans but it suited David Speedie who had always enjoyed playing with Lee. We fell behind early on in the game but, for choice of a finer phrase, pissed all over City after that. The winning margin was a solitary goal in 9 (with Speedie bagging a Wembley hat-trick and Lee grabbing the other two) however it should be noted that we were 5-1 up and City scored three very late goals (including a Doug Rougvie own goal) to give the score line a little bit of respectability.

Our league challenge collapsed at Easter. Still without Dixon we got thrashed 4-0 at the Bridge by West Ham and two days got thrashed, humped and buggered 6-0 on QPR’s plastic pitch. Dixon’s return saw a return to form with 2-1 wins over Man Utd (Dixon scoring both) and West Ham however that glimmer of hope was dashed when we only got one draw out of the last five games of the season and we ended up with a sixth place finish.

For the meaningless last game of the season against Watford, Hollins took the opportunity to hand debuts to some up and coming youngsters. Les Fridge, John McNaught and Gordon Durie (signed from Hibernian) all made their Chelsea debuts and we got turned over 5-1 with Fridge having a mare of a game between the sticks. The player rested to give Durie his debut was Kerry Dixon and he was as happy as a cat in sh*t about it.

1986/87 Season

Hollins looked to consolidate the squad in the summer of 1986. The club record was broken again when we paid £450,000 to bring Steve Wicks back to the Bridge and he was joined by Roy Wegerle as well as the promotion of Durie and McNaught to the first team squad. Leaving the Bridge at the same time were Paul Canoville and Dale Jasper.

Another ‘in and out’ that summer was not on the pitch, but on the shirt. The rampant lion was no longer the club badge, it being replaced by CFC lettering with the feline leaping out of them. F**king disgrace, as a certain Ivorian might say!

On the flip side we also got rid of Le Coq Sportif as our kit supplier which meant we didn’t have to wear that bloody awful red away strip anymore. Of course there was to be a downside to that as well. Ken Bates decided we could produce our own kit. Ladies and gentleman I give you the ‘Chelsea Collection’ – all I can say is that it was good of us to give employment to colour blind fashion designers, it showed our ‘care for the community’ side. Our away strip was bloody jade!

It always sounds somehow magnificent and tragic to tell a tale of a great start to the season, building expectations, dashed by cruel injury and ending in disappointment. The 86/87 season wasn’t one of those kinds of season.

Our start to the season was so criminal you could have put a knob on its head and called it Steven Gerrard. We drew with Norwich, Oxford and Coventry and lost to Sheffield Wednesday and Luton. Even when we did turn things round a little with away wins at Spurs and Man Utd we still crumbled to an embarrassing 6-2 gubbing at the Bridge at the hands of Nottingham Forest.

Hollins couldn’t decide what his best team was and he rotated faster than Ranieri in a spin dryer. Results didn’t improve and Hollins dropped Speedie, McLaughlin and Spackman for a Milk Cup tie against York City. All three picked up their toys, and all the toys of all the people they could find around them in the club, outside the club, and in the broad area of Greater London, and promptly launched them out of the pram. Three transfer requests were promptly slapped on Hollins’s desk.

Speedie’s anger was not purely down to being dropped. He also had no time for Ernie Whalley (Chelsea’s coach and strict disciplinarian) and had fallen out with Hollins over a reported interest in him being shown by Barcelona the previous summer. Speedie’s agent is reported to have informed him that Barcelona were interested and Speedie told his agent he wasn’t interested in leaving Chelsea however that he should speak to Hollins about it. Speedie then told Hollins to discuss it with Ken Bates but two weeks later, Speedie approached Bates and discovered Hollins had never mentioned it. Speedie saw this as disrespectful and made his annoyance clear. Soon after a story was leaked that Speedie was trying to negotiate a deal with Barcelona behind the club’s back – Speedie charismatically described this as ‘bullsh*t’

Hollins tells a different tale to Speedie. He claims he brought Speedie and Bates into an office and called Terry Venables (then Barcelona’s boss) who stated he had no knowledge of any interest in Speedie and that they already had mark Hughes, Gary Lineker and Steve Archibald and therefore no need for another striker.

Whichever version of the story was true the bottom line was that the combination of that saga, being dropped and Whalley’s excessive code of discipline (the players were banned from swearing in training!) left Speedie with the hump.

With the level of mutiny rising amongst the first team squad the best thing for a manager to do is ensure he has the backing of more senior members at the club. Did you hear that John? The BEST thing you can do. Hollins didn’t agree. John Neal was no longer a director, he had stepped down form that role but had returned in a consultative role (whatever that means) and it was a role that Hollins was far from happy about. Hollins felt he was being undermined with many of the players still thinking of Neal as ‘boss’ rather than their current manager.

1986 trundled along and things didn’t improve. We were knocked out of the Littlewoods Cup by fourth division Cardiff (the day we first heard chants form the fans for Hollins to resign). This result led to John Neal criticising Hollins in the Evening Standard – a move that lead to Bates sacking Neal for showing lack of loyalty. Bates then issued a vote of confidence in his programme notes and also slated select players for not taking responsibility for the club’s poor results.

By now we were deep in the relegation dogfight and our position worsened when we got beat 3-1 by bottom of the table Newcastle – their fans celebrated by baring their wobbling bellies at us (it was, after all, only late November and they still hoped to pick up a tan in London). The Chelsea faithful demanded the reinstatement of Speedie, Spackman and Hazard who were out of favour whilst the likes of Darren Wood, Colin Pates and Doug Rougvie were all played hideously out of position.

Colin Lee and Micky Hazard were the next two first team players to criticise Hollins with Lee picking on strategy and Hazard on team selections. The level of disharmony in the squad had reached a critical stage and Gordon Taylor, then secretary of the PFA, stepped in to recommend a meeting between Hollins and those players who were expressing their dissatisfaction. As a consequence of the meeting Speedie and Spackman were back in the first team and that appeared to have an instant impact as we beat West Ham 2-1.

An instant impact which lasted next to bugger all time! Wimbledon hammered us 4-0 (not helped by Rougvie being sent off early doors for head-butting John Fashanu – in retrospect an honourable crime!, then Liverpool beat us 3-0 at Anfield and Spurs beat us 2-0 at the Bridge. We were bottom of the table and, to add insult to injury, we had for a few games at least played in strips sponsored by ‘Lin Tea’ – a produce designed by an Australian con man and sold as a slimming aid. If you want evidence that it was bogus let me inform you that Mickey Quinn drank gallons of it.

Santa took pity on us over the festive period and delivered some much needed gifts as we turned form on its head and won games against Southampton, Aston Villa and QPR. We climbed out of the drop zone despite the fact that Speedie, McLaughlin, Wicks, Hazard and Rougive were all on the transfer list and Arsenal were sniffing around Kerry Dixon. We then tried to sign Alan Smith from Leicester which further placed doubt over Dixon’s Chelsea career. The Smith deal never transpired and instead we spent our money on a largely unknown defender from St Mirren called Steve Clarke. Clarke was to become a massive figure in Chelsea history for the next 20 years and he was bloody important then as well! He was instrumental in helping us cut back on the number of daft goals we conceded between then and the end of the season.

Spackman was sold to Liverpool, Wegerle and Colin West were promoted to first team duties and Kerry Dixon, incredibly, was to be found playing reserve team football. Our season was turned on its head from then on, we strung together results which, if had been achieved over the whole season would have seen us easily finish in the top six instead of the fourteenth position we ended up finishing in. Dixon finished the season as our top league goal scorer for the 4th consecutive season however he achieved with a relatively disappointing return of 10 goals.

1987/88 Season

If you thought the 1986/87 season sounded like a howler then let me tell you it was a Paul Furlong in comparison with the Chris Sutton that was the 1987/88 season!

It started badly with the sale of David Speedie to Coventry for £750,000 and he was joined at the exit door by Doug Rougvie, Colin Lee, Keith Dublin, Tony Godden, Keith Jones and not long after the start of the season, John McNaught. However we did bring in Tony Dorigo (for another new club record of £475,000), Clive Wilson and Kevin Wilson, a man with a moustache that ruined his career in child care.

Kerry Dixon considered the sale of Speedie and Spackman to be grave errors as he felt the foundation that John Neal had built was being stripped and the team spirit breaking down.

In addition to changes in personnel, Hollins decided it was time for a change in club captaincy. The armband passed from Colin Pates to Joe McLaughlin however Hollins handled the situation about as well as Jamie Carragher handled not being selected for England ahead of vastly superior centre halves. Pates had a sneaky feeling Hollins was thinking of a change in captaincy so had approached him about it prior to pre-season to say that, should that be the case, could he be the first to know. He then went on holiday, got back, picked up the paper and found out he was no longer captain.

In defiance of what was to come we started the season very well. By the end of September we were in second place in the league and had just signed a three year shirt deal with Commodore worth just over £400k a year (at that point the biggest sponsorship deal in the history of English football – or so Ken Bates claimed. I have no idea if that is true or not).

We wouldn’t be Chelsea if we didn’t manage to take a good thing and turn it into a portrait of Peter Beardsley taking Ian Dowie from behind. Reading, then in the old second division, knocked us out of the League Cup and John Hollins had to substitute Clive Wilson at half time in the second leg because the ref had threatened to send him off for arguing non stop with Joe McLaughlin.

Although we then won our next two league games our win over Oxford was ruined by what turned out to be a career ending knee injury for Eddie Niedzwiecki.

Steady Eddie was replaced by Roger Freestone who had as much exposure to top flight football as the Pope does to nubile Colombian lovelies. At home our form was poor, away it was bloody tragic. We lost four on the bounce away and drew five consecutive games at the Bridge. We were now treading mid table water and embarrassment turned to shame when Second division Swindon knocked us out of the Full Members Cup with a resounding 4-0 thrashing.

That was followed by a 0-0 draw in the league against Pompey, a game which ended with the Chelsea fans calling for Hollins’ head

For teams struggling in the league the FA Cup often provides some relief and also the chance to turn your season round. Given these things it wasn’t ideal that we had drawn Manchester United in the fourth round. Even less ideal was that Hollins decided to drop both Pat Nevin and Mick Hazard. Without them we were as creative as the Scottish second division. We lost 2-0, we were lucky to get nil.

By now Hollins was tinkering so much that a young manager called Don Claudio at Campania Puteolana was mocking him. We had played three, four and five at the back, and tried flat formations and sweepers and they were all equally successful – we were tony pony! Notts Forest beat us, then Manchester United beat us, then Bates sacked Ernie Whalley (who was as popular with the players as lemon juice on a paper cut) and brought in Bobby Campbell as Hollin’s new assistant manager.

Despite the fact that describing our season as going tits up would have been generous, we, as Chelsea fans still had one thing that gave us great pleasure, seeing Kerry Dixon in a Chelsea shirt. Pleasure, like foreplay, can come to a premature end! Kerry handed in a transfer request saying he needed a fresh start and making it clear he needed to get away from a team managed by John Hollins. Arsenal were extremely interested and it appeared as if we were going to have to suffer seeing Dixon as a Gooner. ‘Will he f**k join Arsenal!’ said Ken Bates on his return from a holiday in Spain. Well he wasn’t actually reported as saying that however I think we can all imagine him saying it. A crisis meeting was held, Dixon was staying and the only really surprising outcome was that Hollins wasn’t sacked with immediate effect. What was decided was that Hollins would see the season, and his contract, out and would then be relived of his irrespective of how the rest of the campaign panned out.

At this point I should admit that I was not chuffed with Kerry. I was too young to understand the whole ‘behind the scenes’ shenanigans and all I could see was my favourite Chelsea player handing in a transfer request. I recall penning an angry letter to him (which I never posted) in which I questioned his loyalty and, wait for it, claimed that the likes of Gordon Durie would never turn their back on Chelsea (how little I knew!!)

In the eyes of the players, and the media vultures, Hollins was now a dead man walking with Bobby Campbell just twiddling his thumbs until such time as he took over as manager. Having said that it helped turn things round for us, well it did for 45 minutes. We were 3-0 up against Oxford and cruising to desperately needed points to help pull us away from a relegation battle. By full time it was 4-4! That was actually our fourth game since the crisis meeting; we hadn’t won any of them! Enough was enough. Hollins was paid off and Campbell was appointed as caretaker manager until the end of the season.

We were going to be OK. We would be galvanised by the change at the top, six of our remaining games were at home and Campbell brought in a very young Kevin Hitchcock from Mansfield and threw him straight into the first team. Sounds great doesn’t it. Pity it is bollocks – well not actually bollocks, all of that was true, apart from the going to be OK part of it. We lost our first game under Campbell and then drew our next four. We had now gone 21 league games without a win, a new, and still club record. The smarty pants amongst you will have realised that the act it I still a club record means we must have won the next game – well done you. We beat Derby at the Bridge by a solitary Hazard goal. Three valuable points which meant we were safe from the automatic drop, the worst we could do now was end up in a play off position – which is exactly what we did. We got stuffed by West Ham 4-1 (who ended up finishing above us on goal difference) and went into the last game of the season against Charlton needing a win to avoid the play off. We drew 1-1 with their equaliser being a jammy deflection.

We were drawn against Blackburn Rovers in the semi final of the play off. We disposed of them with considerable ease – a 2-0 away win and 4-1 at the Bridge to secure a 6-1 aggregate win. Confidence was high for the final against Middlesbrough. We lost the first leg (away) 2-0 despite playing better than we had for months meaning we faced a massive uphill task at the Bridge. Nevin started the second leg on fire and, in the 20th minute, tormented the Boro defence before setting up Durie to fire us into a 1-0 lead. We pushed for the second but despite a wall of pressure the Boro defence stood strong and the final whistle signalled the end of our top flight status.

The Boro fans took to the pitch to celebrate and the Chelsea fans took to the pitch to deny them the pleasure. Safe to say it kicked off and the battles carried on outside the ground as the fans spilled out. The police made 102 arrests – years later it would probably be reminisced about and treated as a ‘bit of a larf’ – it wasn’t.

Ken Bates has a habit of dealing with these things calmly. Or at least he does in a parallel universe. First he bollocked the players before making it clear that none of them were going anywhere as they had a job to do to restore us to the top flight. Then he stormed upstairs to face the media and said ‘I’m off to my 300-acre farm. You lot can bugger off to your council houses.’

The 1987/88 season was not only a sad one because we were relegated. It was also a sad one because it was the last season which would allow us to enjoy Pat Nevin’s talents in a Chelsea shirt. Nevin never really took to Bobby Campbell due to Campbell’s tendency to favour grind over flair. Nevin moved on to Everton for a tribunal set £975,000 and Chelsea lost someone who wasn’t just a great footballer but also a great human being. A footballer who was prepared to speak his mind even when society needed it most but the football world wasn’t interested, and a man who was more than prepared to stand up to the masses when the majority turned a blind eye. For me he was, and is, a Chelsea legend because of his personality first and foremost – his ability was just a bloody great bonus.