[mst77]

Interesting comments by the Chelsea Correspondent on SNet. I wouldn't mind hearing what some of the older fans have to say on this. Is this really how a lot of Blues feel? Being a newer fan myself I never saw the lean years.

My throwaway comments about Chelsea becoming another Tottenham or West Ham appear to have caused offence over at West Ham towers. The Hammers correspondent whilst reaching half heartedly for the moral high ground (which runs something like - we are at least an honest footballing side gov we don't get ideas above our station) fails to walk tall by revealing his pleasure at the idea of Chelsea going to the bank once more to borrow money and having yet another dig at Frankie Lampard (let it go boys he's left and he isn't coming back!). Billy Billy Billy, much as I enjoy your page you miss the point as effortlessly as your side does when playing away from home. Chelsea are not one of the big boys, we have never been and we never will be. Our ground is opposite a pub, we had to beg borrow and steal to get permission to expand its capacity to 42000 only to get gates of 39000. We are like West Ham, and Spurs and to a lesser extent Aston Villa. Thing is for a while there we pretended we weren't. We walked like Manure and the Arse and have 2 FA Cups, a Worthington Cup, a Cup Winners Cup and a European Super League Cup to show for it. We have a quarterfinal of the Champions League, regular European football and a handful of World Cup winners at a club that not so long ago boasted Robert Fleck as a star signing. We are football fans - it is not our job to estimate our worth on the stock market before deciding what we have the right to win that year. It's our job to dream and scream and love unconditionally and shout at the referee and hate the Neville brothers. You and everyone will enjoy our projected poverty but you are as silly as Christian Dailly's haircut if you imagine we didn't see it coming. At worst we sold our collective souls for a few years of fun, some trophies, some outstanding football and a lack of mediocrity. Your analysis that football has become an uneven obstacle race weighted toward the big guns is undone by your compliance with those silly offensive market economy rules. Sod Man Utd and thier army of glory-hunting know-nothing fans, sod Arsenal and Liverpool who imagine they have a god-given right to glory because they used to have Kenny Dalglish playing for them and gave the world the Liver Birds. We crashed the party, took away more cups than Liverpool, Leeds, West Ham, Spurs, Villa, Everton, Newcastle and the rest put together and had a good time. Might we see a few lean years? Its possible. But maybe we won't, and either way as a footballing side and in spite of the fact we have an idiot for a chairman (remember fans don't pick thier boards Billy) we mixed it with the big boys. We were, as so many say, too big for our boots, and maybe that is one of the reason why so many people hate us. Anyway, can't you lot take a joke? Titi Camara for example?


Thoughts?

[Clan]

Interesting comments for sure MST.

I started to follow Chelsea as a nipper in the years after the infamous replay in the FA cup final with Leeds.
They were good years for a while and some great players were at the Bridge.However, as i said, i was a nipper and i don't give a fuk what anyone sez to the contrary, you simply can't appreciate what you see at that age.

The 80's were my years Mst.
I remember the season ending 1980 and we just failed to get promotion to the first division....failed to get up in the worst imaginable way possible.We finished 4th on goal difference.....I remember it well as we had one of our biggest ever away wins 7-3 against the Orient.

But we lost at home to QPR with a few games to go in the run in and in the end it knackered us.
Tremendous bad blood has been the outcome of that result to this day .
Expectations were high that year as we had just come down the previous one and were looking for a straight shot back up.
Money being the problem ye see.
We needed to get back up or be faced with selling our better players.

Well, as it went we missed out and the next couple of seasons were pretty miserable.Crowds averaged less and less as the seasons went by.Expectation of geting to the first division never wavered, but more realistic aims took shape instead.A good cup run was wonderfull...as opposed to today when all the band wagon jumpers expect us to get to and win finals

To make matters worse the yids and the Hammers were doing good.The Hammers won the Cup in 80 i believe it was and we really were a p1ss poor side.Don't let anyone kid you on that one mate.

By now most of our decent players were gone and new ones were in.
In '83 we almost went to div 3 believe it or not.
Then along came a fella by the name of kerry Dixon.
The following season saw us light up the second division and we broke several records along the way.Most goals and most points i remember.

Great time.
I remember we had a simply enthralling race with the owls (Sheff Wed) that year for the title.
Me and a bunch of mates went to blundell park for the final game of the season where we needed to win to secure the title.It should be noted that grimsby themselves were in the hunt for promotion that year as well and in fact toped the table before the xmas for a while.
Anyways they fell off the pace andslaged us off as being no hopers.Lots of bad blood formed up then....come to think of it i really can't think of any side that we didn't have bad blood with in those days....save perhaps our fellow blues in Rangers and linfield, but thats another story....Anyways the mariners beat us at home right before christmas....fuked if i can remember the score line now, but there were several goals though, think it was 2-3 but not sure exactly....and thats why they started slaging us off.
Well we went to their gaff and stuffed them 1-0 with a header by dixon.We won the title.

In all of that season we though we were the best thing since sliced bread.We feared nobody...both on and off the field ...and played some fantastic football.We looked forward to playing the big teams of the time.
The scouse being the bigest.Funny though we though if we could hang with them we would be okay...unlike today where the newbies expect to beat them.

Well we stayed up for 4 seasons and then we were back down again.They were changing the amount of teams in the league that season and we were the 4th team to be relegated in '88 to bring it into the 20 teams it has today.

Get this....we went down on fuking goal difference.

I never saw that in person as on sept 27th of that year (87) i left for the United States.
The last match before i went was against the yids ...and we lost.

All thru my time there we were a second division outfit for the most part.
We really never did alot by the standard of the teams of the late 90's and our greatest claim to fame that i can remember was Kerry Dixon geting a cap.But we enjoyed our football and had a great laugh.We knew we wern't a "big 3" or anything of the sort.Bur we enjoyed the game all the more because of that fact..we knew we wouldn't win the title so when we finished top six for a season or two it was fantastic.

Money was different back then too.I remember the day that Francis became the first million pound transfer and everybody though Clough and Forrest were fuking mad as hatters for doing it.
Nobody "bought" success in those days.

As i watched from afar these past years at the players that graced Stamford bridge and the silverware that came with them i envied the people that were there...but i knew most of them were wannabe fans anyway.

We had about 18,000 of an average in my day....now we're close to 40,000.
A few more lean years and a lot of them will be found with red scarfs up in islington.

Chelsea were never a big club in my day and never looked like becoming one either...but we didn't give a fuk about that.
It's only now-a-days that the fact of being a big club seems importent.

All money related though i suppose as the bigger the club the better the deals the more money the better the player the bigger the club..etc etc etc etc

Of course we all dreamed about it, who wouldn't?

That article i'll bet was writtem by someone not less that 40 years old.

[fernb8]

all this "big club" talk seems a load of bollox to me. Look at Spudz, most of thier fans still believe they are a big club, even though they have won ************ all recently. But based on the past and on some of the players who played at 3 point lane (Hoddle, Ardilles, Blanchflower, Klinsmann, etc) Spudz are still a big club (that really hurts to say and I know I am going to catch flak from Clan on that one.) Is it really important to be labelled a big club? Surely with the right players and proper managment a team can put itself in a position to win a trophy and possibly play in Europe with all the available places.
I dont remember a great deal about the 70s, but I went through the dark ages when everyone was a Liverpool fan and the name Chelsea brought snotty looks. Times have changed, football has changed, Chelsea has returned to the top league in the world, where the rightly deserve to be.

[BridgeMonkee]

Its a way of life. Supporting Chelsea. The mention of the word strikes fear into supporters of other clubs. Its a club of extremes, working class and very posh supporters. One minute high and one minute low.

We have the record highest attendance for any English club for the the game against Moscow after the war. And the 2nd highest attendance for any league game (after Man city who have the record for the highest league game attendance). That is a bigger crowd than any EVER at Highbury, Old Traford or Anfield. Does that mean we are a big club? Could do, couldn't it.

we are flash.
We are under-achievers.
We are best team to support.

[mst77]

nice to know there are some fans that have their heads screwed on right. I feel like I missed out on a lot now having not grown up in England. I really think you need to have a long-term perspective when looking at the club's fortunes and hearing about the ups and downs of the past 30+ years definitely puts today's problems in perspective. I try to be moderate with my expectations but coming late to the game I have only seen the good times. Thanks for the stories, let's hope our current success continues.

[fernb8]

you may have joined late mst, but you seem like an older fan to me. Its good to see fans that did not experience the Dark Ages, but still have enough repsect to realise that things could be a lot worse than the current "problems". I remeber when we almost lost Stamford Bridge, thats why all this talk about debt is not that worrying. The papers are so full of shyte (and I am beginning to add soccernet to this esteemed list, pack of biased reporting bastards) that they will write anything to grab attention.

[Clan]

I have long been of the opinion fern that soccernet has links to the Mirror, such is their seeming hatred for all things Chelsea.

Have you ever noticed though the large amount of english posters on soccernet as opposed to the large amount of American posters on Big Soccer?

Lots of children on both, but this one is so much better prepared and equiped to handle the bollox from them.

I'm surprised Elland never made a trip over here, but then again it would be an all to brief (for him) visit i think.

[fernb8]

aka soccernet boards

I havent been over there since mst (thanks again mate) sent me here. Same shyte every day, a few good threads going and then the idiots ruin it. I wrote and reported several offenders several times but it was all to no avail. Personally I think that soccernet encourages these idiots to keep the boards busy. Not to mention most of the articles are so pro-Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool that its absolutely disgusting. The match reports are very off base at times and I think they get most of thier "facts" from the Sun.

We should try to get some of the good posters from that board to come over here, at least they wouldnt have deal with Elland anymore.

[mst77]

there aren't many good ones left. The ones who I enjoy the random chat seem addicted to the SNet way of life. I let one poster, Dr Intoxicated, know about this place. Traded emails with him just before the opener at the Valley which he got to go to - might be a seaosn ticket holder, I'm not sure. Speaking of that, any of you guys ST holders? If notm how do you get your tix when you get back? I've had to have friends go to the box office to buy for matches where we haven't sold out and it seems a pain for them.