Shamelessly nicked from the official site.

 

 

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.
 

 

 

Twenty-five years ago today, on 22 April 1989, Chelsea were crowned Second Division champions

Do the club have any idea how disrespectful that article is towards the Hillsborough anniversary?

 

I don't think I got to a single game that season. I got married in May 1988, and the Boro play-off game was the first day of my honeymoon! Our daughter was born the following year, and life changed!

Edited April 23, 201412 yr by Backbiter

 

THE 99-POINT PROMOTION - PART TWO
Posted on: Wed 23 Apr 2014

Yesterday, the official Chelsea website began celebrating the 25th anniversary of a vital season in the club's history by telling the story of the Second Division Championship win in 1988/89.

Having been relegated the season before and got off to a sticky start in the quest to return to the top flight, Part One recalled those early weeks with an upturn in fortunes coming in a win at Leeds.

In Part Two today, the rise up the league table continues unabated through winter with reinforcements brought in before we take on our closest challenges on their turf up north…

Chelsea's first victory at Leeds for over quarter of a century and first in the 1988/89 campaign had come on the final weekend of September. It was the seventh game of the season.

Although there was a stumble out of the League Cup against lower division Sc**thorpe, Bobby Campbell's side went through October with five wins, one draw and one defeat in the league, at Hull, and with four goals put past Oldham on their notoriously difficult plastic pitch and five past Plymouth.

The defeat on Humberside proved to be the last in the league for nearly sixth months, a run of 27 games unbeaten.

One of the surest signs that this was a team with the character and the ability to dominate the division came away at Stoke in early December. Peter Nicholas was sent off only five minutes into the game yet we still ran out 3-0 winners.

A big Friday evening win at Birmingham placed us back at the top of the table at last and on New Year's Eve we hosted West Brom who were second but level on points. The Blues were losing 1-0 with only a minute left on the clock until one of the season's most lethal weapons was unleashed - the Graham Roberts penalty.

The spot-kick he buried into the north end net was one of 12 penalties the defender scored out of an impressive goal total of 17 for the season.

'He could handle the pressure of taking the penalties because he had played at Tottenham and Rangers, and for England, and Chelsea are a big club too and he could carry the expectation of the fans,' says Campbell.

'He was ice cold. People said he was a big hard man but he had good feet, he could nip in and flick the ball around and control it, and if my life depended on someone taking penalties then I would choose him.'

It is testament to how well Roberts (pictured below) did with his accuracy from 12 yards and juggernaut-like tackling that this former Tottenham favourite was voted Chelsea Player of the Year by the fans at the season's end.

 

 

To win so many penalties, it helped to have nippy attacking players such as Gordon Durie, Kevin Wilson, Kevin McAllister, who was asked to take on the mantle left by fellow Scottish winger Pat Nevin, and Clive Wilson, not to mention flying full-backs Tony Dorigo and Steve Clarke.

Campbell often managed to accommodate in the same side three players who were generally regarded as central strikers in Durie, Kevin Wilson and the previously prolific Dixon.

'Basically I didn't play wide,' explains Dixon. 'It was me down the centre and one either side, but Kevin would also get in the box and he got a few goals that year, as did 'Jukebox' Durie, and because of that, I was more prepared to go out wide sometimes and I actually found that certainly down the right side, I could be quite effective crossing at times. I still had some pace and I started to put a decent ball in and certainly Willo got a few goals out of it.'

Importantly, Dixon, whose large goal hauls for Chelsea had won him a place in the England 1986 World Cup squad, rediscovered his scoring boots in 1988/89 having fallen away as the Blues descended the First Division.

He netted 28 goals, of which 25 came in the league, and carried his form back into the top flight the next year to the degree that England manager Bobby Robson told him he almost made the Italia '90 squad. By the end of the promotion season he was just a hat-trick short of Peter Osgood and Roy Bentley's then-second-highest 150 goals for the club, and had signed a new three-year contract.

Durie, despite typical interruptions for injury, scored 17 goals that year and Kevin Wilson added 13 to the league total. Five of Durie's came in a single game (pictured below) - at Walsall in the February when the home side were beaten 7-0, a club record away league win.

 

 

'I remember we were walking towards their home end when we left the pitch at the end of the game, and their fans clapped us off,' says midfielder John Bumstead.

Dixon was injured that day so the no. 9 shirt was worn by mid-season signing Dave Mitchell. He didn't score that game, nor in any of his seven subsequent Chelsea appearances. It wasn't a good season for everyone in blue.

'Dave Mitchell was an Australian lad and a good player,' says Campbell. 'He played in Holland for Feyenoord and over there he was one of the best, and I went and bought him but he was an example of someone who could not cope with the pressure of what it is to be a Chelsea player.

 

 

Dorigo'I played three strikers because I liked good footballers and I thought if you give the opposition more problems than they give you then you have a start. It's even better if you have defenders who can defend but also have the ability to create from the back, and people talk these days about full-backs going forward but I had two in Tony Dorigo (pictured right) and Stevie Clarke who went forward all the time.'

Two games before that thrashing of Walsall, an important change had taken place at the back. Kevin Hitchcock started the season in goal but suffered injury and shared the gloves with young Welsh keeper Roger Freestone.

'When I first came in as coach the previous season I said to John Hollins we are a bit thin on the ground for goalkeepers. We had a boy called Perry Digweed who I had put in the first team at Fulham when he was 16 and I knew he was a good player, but he wasn't our player, he was on loan from Brighton and they wanted him back.

'So I got Kevin Hitchcock in and he did a great job for us. Roger Freestone was a good lad, a good goalkeeper but with all due respect he wasn't quality enough to hold a place down in the First Division which is where I thought we were going.

'We went up north for a game one day and on the bus coming back I bought Dave Beasant from Newcastle. We paid a lot of money for him but he was the best around that we could get. He was another one like Graham Roberts, he was good in the club and they knew their way around - they were men.'

 

 

Only a few months earlier, Beasant had been one of the heroes of Wimbledon's unlikely FA Cup final win and on the back of that, Newcastle made him English football's most expensive keeper. But then the Tyneside club hit financial problems and sold the 29-year-old down a division to Chelsea. The £725,000 we paid for the 29-year-old was at that point a club record outlay.

'I want to be a First Division player and I want to be on that stage with Chelsea,' Beasant said soon after signing.

'As soon as I came here I knew things were right, I had an immediate understanding with the defence. They have a lot of experience and they play as a unit.'

It was not a season for blooding young players, that would come quite extensively a couple of seasons later, but one did breakthrough in this Second Division year - 18-year-old centre-back/midfielder David Lee.

He scored as a sub on his debut, one of four goals in 20 league games that year, as well quickly acquiring a nickname from the crowd - Rodney Trotter, after lookalike character in huge TV sitcom hit at the time, Only Fools and Horses.

On 18 March and riding the crest of our unbeaten wave, Chelsea travelled to Maine Road to take on Manchester City who were one point ahead at the top of the table having played a game more.

In front of a 40,000 crowd, we were 2-0 up by half-time with the lead then extended by what was the iconic moment of the whole season.

'It is funny because every year I get reminded about that goal,' says Dorigo, the scorer, 'and it was brilliant because City were doing very well that year as well, our biggest rivals, and we went up to their place and similar to this season, Chelsea played fantastically well.

'I'd already put one in that game at the near post from a corner,' recalls Dixon (pictured above). 'When we broke from another corner, Dorigo ran over half the length of the pitch with the ball and went round the keeper to put us 3-0 up.

 

 

'It was an unbelievable goal,' adds Campbell. 'Tony just kept going and he scored some important goals for us.'

'Man City came back to 3-2 but was anyone worried?' smiles Dorigo. 'It wasn't a problem. That win kind of cemented that it was going to be our year. We had some very good players and we knew we were the favourites, but you still have to do it and we did thank goodness.

'Our support was incredible that day and that sticks in my mind clearly, because we would go up to these grounds in the north and to get that kind of backing always really helped.'

'We used to take away five, six or seven thousand people to these Second Division games - unbelievable!' agrees Campbell.

-In the final part tomorrow, the game promotion was won against familiar opposition is recalled.

Do the club have any idea how disrespectful that article is towards the Hillsborough anniversary?

What? 25 years plus a week....

Had Leicester not spoilt the party then you might've got a point.

Do the club have any idea how disrespectful that article is towards the Hillsborough anniversary?

I would dearly love to think so....

 

I don't think I got to a single game that season. I got married in May 1988, and the Boro play-off game was the first day of my honeymoon! Our daughter was born the following year, and life changed!

 

Belated congratulations! It was also a little awkward for me to get to the Bridge back in the late '80s. I got married in 1989, fool that I was.

I got married in 88, just after the Boro game when it all kicked off, Chelsea was a blur for that first year of marriage.

 

But go back 5 years to 84 and we had another great promotion season.

 

http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/division-two-old/1983-1984/table

 

THE 99-POINT PROMOTION - PART THREE
Posted on: Thu 24 Apr 2014

In the final part of our look back at the 1988/89 promotion season, the final weeks of the season are recalled by then manager Bobby Campbell and two of the goalscorers involved.

In Part One and Part Two of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the campaign, the official Chelsea website recalled the relegation the previous year, the uncertain start to the recovery, and the team hitting its stride with a record unbeaten run.

With closest challengers Manchester City beaten away in mid-March, the target for the season was in reach…

The Maine Road victory was the second in a run of eight straight wins that broke City's challenge for the title, and included a 5-3 win over Barnsley with Kerry Dixon scoring four, and Graham Roberts striking home another penalty as we came out on top 3-2 in a difficult fixture at West Brom.

The victories meant promotion with five games still to follow was possible with a win at Leicester on 15 April.

Chelsea lost 2-0 that day but the slight setback paled into insignificance when news filtered through of events further up the M1 in Sheffield, or more specifically, at Hillsborough.

'I was a bit annoyed about the result at Leicester because I am always annoyed if we don't win, but just after that someone said did you hear about the disaster,' remembers Bobby Campbell, 'and I said stuff everything else after that! That hit me hard being a Liverpool boy and having been a Liverpool player.'

Promotion was postponed by only one week and as five years earlier, it was achieved at home to Leeds United. With a degree of symmetry within the season as well, it was John Bumstead, who had scored his only other goal of the season in the away game in Yorkshire, who was on-target again. The only goal of the game also sealed the Second Division championship.

'In that position, normally I would have passed it,' admits the Rotherhithe-born former Blue.

'I remember Kevin Wilson shouting for it and nine times out of 10 I would have rolled it off, but for some reason I just turned and hit it. I didn't actually see it go in, but I just thought I would have a go myself. Luckily enough it paid off. It was nice to win promotion at home again. Even though we would definitely have gone up anyway, it would have seemed a missed opportunity if we hadn't beaten Leeds.'

 

'John Bumstead was the first name that went on my team sheet and the rest were filled in round him,' claims Campbell.

'He was consistently very good over a matter of years. He is a cabby now and I often see him on the King's Road, and he toots his horn and shouts to me.'

Dixon describes the Leeds game as a bit of a drab affair.

'It was certainly not the euphoria of the promotion before when we beat them 5-0, but it was still Leeds, it was still a promotion. The thing was everyone pretty much expected it. In 1984 it was four good sides fighting for promotion, this time we were the stand-out team.

'It was just a case of when we would get promoted, and everyone had their own little targets. Bobby was saying he wanted the team to get record points and record goals, and I also obviously wanted to score as many goals as I could. Willo kept saying he would catch me - yeah, he was dreaming - but nevertheless it was all healthy banter and the win was comfortable.'

The next game after promotion and the divisional title had been sealed was away at relegation-bound Shrewsbury.

'We drew 1-1 and it was one of the few times I gave Kerry a telling off,' says Campbell.

'We only drew with this team that we had battered and it cost us 100 points. We ended on 99 and I wanted 100 and Kerry, not that he was bad that day but he would have had five or six normally, and I blamed him.

'But he's a great lad Kerry. He was sorted out to go to Arsenal before I got to Chelsea and I stopped that. He scored goals for fun but I used to get on to him for not working hard enough, telling him you have to help your team, and he used to say gaffer, what do you want me to do, chase the full-back up to there or score goals? So I said get on with it!'

 

'Bobby was great,' praises Dixon. 'He didn't panic when the team went down and he was given the opportunity to rebuild and he brought Nicho in and Robbo in, two solid experienced players just to add to what we had, and he managed very well. He built a solid team.'

'There was experience throughout the whole side, and we all had played in winning teams before,' points out Bumstead. 'We played attacking football but with experienced pros, and there was a great will to win.'

'It wasn't as much a flair side as the first promotion team but we were a good side,' adds Dixon.

It was a sign of just how good and how solid the team was that the next season, with just a couple of additions, they finished fifth in Division One, the highest league placing since 1970.

As chairman Bates said in his programme notes for the final game of the promotion year: 'So much has happened this season. We started on a real low; unjustly fined, terrace closure and an opening defeat, 20th in the league after six games and our [stadium] planning permission unresolved.

'Today we are undisputed runaway champions, record points, record club unbeaten sequence and gate receipts exactly on target. We have our planning consent and we have not sold any star players.'

Chelsea were back in English football's top flight, and we have been there ever since.

 

Top read Tommy, I went to loads of games that year, loved it!

Great stuff Tommy, brings it all back. What a top season and as for the Leicester away the most one eyed ref ever. I remember my mate knocked down the kiosk boarding as the game finished, plenty of hands went over into the stores. Just desserts after that ref's sh*t turn out. And as for the man city away game who would come to think we would be battling each other for a top spot years later, just one division higher. Great days! 

Great Season went to every home and away games that season the day we play Man City at Main Road Man United was also at home play in 1/4 final of the cup

That won't happen today, as for Leicester we were in the stand when it kicked off at half time .

This was one of the best season ever.

Great Season went to every home and away games that season the day we play Man City at Main Road Man United was also at home play in 1/4 final of the cup

That won't happen today, as for Leicester we were in the stand when it kicked off at half time .

This was one of the best season ever.

Nice one oldschoolcfc, we were behind the goal but i remember it kicking off, then again it normally did. It was the first time i saw a chelsea y*d buster t-shirt. Saw about 80 youth popping into town before the game to see the sights of Leicester and one of the lads was proudly wearing it. Met kevin Wilson outside nice fella to be fair, top day out! 

My first season as a member, went to most home games and a few away games. I remember getting my membership card from that portakabin in the entrance to the shed. I used to go into the shop on the way to and from Fulham broadway and pick up some badges, there wasn't all the Chelsea merchandise there is now. A tea cosy hat maybe a Chelsea mug was all I had. Great days.