Some of Chelsea’s origins.
Chelsea FC was formed on 10 March 1905 in an upstairs room at the Rising Sun pub, Fulham Road. Among the founding directors were millionaire owner Henry Augustus ‘Gus’ Mears, his brother Joseph, their brother-in-law Henry Boyer, publican Alfred Janes and his nephew Edwin. In 1904, Gus Mears acquired the Stamford Bridge athletics stadium with the aim of turning it into a football ground. An offer to lease it to nearby Fulham was turned down, so Mears opted to found his own club to use the stadium.
The club, the brainchild of another founder, Frederick Parker, would be started from scratch to fill Gus Mears’s ambitious stadium, being built across the road at Stamford Bridge by the architect Archibald Leitch. Scotland international Jacky Robertson was engaged as the fledgling club’s player-manager. In collaboration with Parker, who also engineered Chelsea’s admission to Football League Division Two, Robertson built a squad that included their larger-than-life 23 stone goalkeeper Willie Foulke; the club hired football’s first ball-boys to emphasise his presence.
The first game was away on 2 September 1905 at Stockport County in front of a crowd of 7,000. William Foulke, known as ‘Fatty’ became the first Chelsea goalkeeper to save a penalty, but in the melee that followed a wayward County shot was deflected into his own net by Robert McEwan, resulting in a 1- 0 loss.
Here is our entire league record.
Our overall home record against Chelsea has been positive but we have only won 3 of our last 14 games – W3, D6, L5, GF14, GA18.
Memorable home victories in the Prem
27th December 2010 Arsenal 3 Chelsea 1
Goals from Song, Fabregas and Walcott in the 10 minutes either side of half time blew the chavs away. Petr Cech was in goal that day and our only survivor for tomorrow is Kos.
24th September 2016 Arsenal 3 Chelsea 0
Mesut and the dog fancier ran riot two seasons ago. Sanchez and Walcott scored in 4 glorious minutes at the start of the game and Mesut wrapped it up five minutes before half-time. We could field the same team tomorrow minus Le Coq, Santi, Walcott and the dog fancier, which is quite surprising.
Chelsea are 6 points ahead of us therefore losing would put us 9 points behind with only 15 games remaining – and if Man U win or draw against Brighton we would drop into 6th place. A must win game for sure.
GunnerN5
Arsenal News 24/7
arsenalarsenal.net 
Thanks, GN5.
Interesting to find out that Chelsea did have some history before 2003. Thank Dennis he didn’t buy the spuds!
Here’s the best clip I can find of the 2010 victory. Seems a long long while ago and it is.
Far more recent – I can remember watching this game live and being blown away by that first quarter of an hour.
Apologies for the annoying high pitched whine on the commentary. 🙂
Thanks GN5
Walcott and Sanchez, who are yer!
Kanu hatrick, and two magnificent Cup finals.
GN5. Thank you. I guess you saw Fatty Foulkes perform live 😀
How clubs are formed is always interesting.
Our record in recent times is cause for concern
LBG
It’s meant to be about home games!
Thank you GN5, there are some memorable games you’ve reminded me of.
I haven’t liked chelsea since the side with Osgood and co. t’s their supporters I dislike the most (same with the spuds).
There has always been an underlying nastiness/thuggery/racism that I can’t abide. But credit where credit is due, Abramovic is one of the few owners trying to do something about racism in football at the moment.
A must win indeed….The good things is that Chelsea is not at its best. We have to block a few players and they become rather neutralized:
– Alonso, Willian, Jorginho, Kante, Hazard
I would hence field the following team:
Leno – Mustafi, Sok, Monreal – Bellerin, Ramsey, Xhaka, Terrier, Kola – Auba, Iwobi
I play Monreal ahead of Kos who is struggling.
Bellerin to tackle Alonso
Kola to tackle Willian
Ramsey to bother Jorginho
Xhaka to cover Kante
Terrier to annoy Hazard
Iwobi and Auba to take the space behind their full-backs.
This is a game for Auba and Ramsey. I also think that Mesut and Laca will be called in as well as Guen or AMN – depending on how we fare at half time.
COYG!
Going down memory lane, it would be good to have a poll for next week at some point as a post and reflecting on the decade that is ending this year (2010 to 2019)
From 2011 to now, who has been your favorite and why:
– GK
– RB:
– LB:
– CB:
– DM:
– CM:
– AM:
– Wingers / FW
– ST:
Just saying…
Wembley is our second home.
RC
Only problems it seems to me are:
Bellerin and Kola can’t tackle…properly.
And the only covering Xhaka could do on Kante is illegal on a football pitch.
Arsenal players AND the BFG watch basketball at the O2 and still the youngsters crush Totnum.
Reports that Edu Gaspar (who knew his second name?) has turned down his old Clubs offer.
Keep Mis, Gunners.
The rumours at the time of Edu’s departure were that his Mrs wanted away from London badly, I think they went to Valencia.
Adding 2 and 2 and making 5 I am guessing that Edu was wanted by the club to have some kind of foothold in Brazil and all the early up and coming talent.
Love the title of dog fancier…………hilarious.
We were never going to win the league with him but I have fond memories of being entertained.
A commodity that has become scarce now days.
Xhaka will just need to tackle Kante all the time. When he is tired (after 50 mins), bring in Guendouzi or AMN to finish Kante off 🙂
Bellerin and Kola are not the best at tackling but the are not going to be outpaced so easily and they are better than Lichten and Monreal.
Just found this and thought I would share it.
Arsenal 3 Chelsea 0………..A few thoughts.
So to start this post off, let’s have a little count to see if we all arrive at the same number. Ready, right then, how many teams are there in London?
Any match report from an Arsenal supporter after that game would and should be one long list of superlatives, so here you go.
Player ratings:
Cech: Solid as a rock 10
Bellerin: Phenomenal 10
Mustafi: Vorsprung durch technik 10
Koscielny: Magnificent 10
Monreal: Brilliant 10
Coquelin: Hero 10
Cazorla: Outstanding 10
Ozil: God like 10
Iwobi: Sublime 10
Sanchez: Awesome 10
Walcott: Exceptional 10
Well that was fun.
OK, the thing is that anyone reading this obviously saw the game so instead of me trying to point out all the things that were special or might have gone unnoticed what I would like you to do is to point them out in the comments below.
For example: one of the things that I thought might have gone unnoticed is that for the first time the team stopped hoofing high balls up to Sanchez and instead only played to his feet, in other words that was the first time that the team played to Sanchez’ strengths rather than what was Giroud’s and surprise, surprise the result was one of the best performances we have seen from the Good Guys in recent years. Interestingly to me was that when the Frenchman did come on he looked completely out of place. I know, I know, this is not the time to start picking holes and furthermore I am sure that there will be times when his skill set will come in useful but any thoughts that Sanchez can’t play a number nine have now vanished from this Arsenal supporters mind. Have the best Sunday you have had in ages.
Written by LB on Cloud 9
LB
Cloud 9, magic mushrooms, potteen, I think your player ratings were a bit high! Walcott 10!
Well played, GN5 a good historical bite to the Post.
I recently saw a c 1914 black and white First World War film restored with colour technology, and it made the lads, facing up to war, look as if they had been fighting just a coupe of decades ago.
Impressive and moving.
Looking at the black and white photo of Stamford Bridge, (?) in the Post (I suppose Chas dug it up) it looked as if it was taken around the same time as the druids were building Stonehenge.
I would never have recognised it even if I had been promised £1m to identify it – altho it was the first stadium I saw Arsenal play in when I was a child living in Chelsea.
LB. It was a wonderful Sunday. Full of hope for our future midget CF. Shame it didn’t work out.
Do you think it was AW’s intransigence or the Dog Fancier’s ability?
Adidas are going to revive the “bruised banana” shirt.
I don’t really think it was AW’s intransigence I think that although the DF is gifted, he is gifted in a much narrower way than was and still is apparent. He is a one man band who fits very badly into every teams system. So many clubs have tried and all have failed.
I wrote many times; he is like the really talented kid in the play ground who can pick the ball up at one end and dribble past everyone without needing anyone’s help and then score. He still plays like that but obviously he doesn’t score all the time and as such his shortcomings are laid bare.
LBG
Giving Walcott 10 was one of the reasons that I posted that, I also laughed when I saw that I gave Mustafi 10 as well. Seems a long time ago.
Hello out there……..Just arrived home after running some errands.
RA- I’ve never been inside Stamford Bridge, never had the urge. I wonder if there are any other EPL teams, like Chelsea, who have never moved grounds?
I don’t wish to sound overly negative but I can’t see us beating Chelsea however it would be wonderful if we did and also kept Man U at bay.
We’ve got a real blast of winter arriving this weekend, an average temperature of -12c with a wind chill making it feel like -20c accompanied by a snow storm that will leave about 6 to10″
Sounds like a good time to put my feet up and watch the EPL and the NFL Championship games, accompanied by some single malt.
GN5. Pretty chilly here but nothing like Canada. We had blue skies today for the first time in ages.
Re: Chelsea. There is always hope until the “w***er in the black” (the execrable Anthony Taylor) blows the final whistle 😀
We are used to this type of weather Raddy and dress accordingly. The local municipalities are ready for these type of storms and the main roads are typically plowed salted and sanded within a few hours.
There are 8 EPL games being shown tomorrow I’ll watch WBA v Leicester and then flip back and forth between the six 3:00pm games and end end with Arsenal v Chelsea.
Morning All,
Hope the Emirates welcome OG back with the grace he deserves. Top bloke who always gave his best
Morning.
Everyone buzzing about the game today, I see.
The caption for the old photo of Stamford Bridge said
“Three schoolboys watch England train at Stamford Bridge ahead of a game against Scotland the following day which attracted a crowd of 100,000 people, 1957 ”
I thought it was funny because it looked like a small crowd.
The old Shed was pretty unmistakeable …..
….and the enormous gap to the pitch big enough to park cars in!
One of the few games I went to at Stamford Bridge. 1978 FA Cup semi versus Orient when Malcolm MacDonald spawned two deflected goals.
The away fans stood to the left of the Shed, out in the rain where we were abused by the Chav hordes. A miserable experience. And the view was terrible,
Better start writing a short post 😦
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