HARDBACK

PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 2024

 

Chelsea FC have been the most successful club in London over the past three decades, yet their history stretches back over a century – from being the butt of musical hall jokes to twice being crowned European Champions. From Ted Drake’s unexpected champions of 1955, to Thomas Tuchel’s surprise Champions League victors of 2021, the club has won ‘the lot’, unlike any of their London rivals.

Now former Daily Mirror Chief Sports Writer Harry Harris and Paul Trevillion, the acclaimed artist behind Roy of the Rovers and ‘You Are The Ref’, have combined forces to produce a personal history of the club. Paul featured Chelsea players heavily in his illustrations for Fleet Street and wrote a column with battering ram centre-forward Ian Hutchinson in the early 1970s that regularly included legends such as Peter Osgood, Ron Harris and Alan Hudson.

Harry spent much of the 1980s and 1990s reporting on the club at close quarters following Ken Bates’ purchase of the Blues for £1 in 1982 and he had a front row seat for the unfolding boardroom battle between Matthew Harding and Bates a decade later that almost tore the club in two. Yet what emerged from that battle
was a club transformed and attractive to ‘big money’. Bates would not have been able to sell the club to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in 2003 without this rapid growth.

The success of the years that followed are featured heavily here as are the fondly remembered teams of earlier periods as well as Chelsea’s recent takeover and the incredible success of the women’s team.