TheChels.net – Spotlight
Frank Lampard will be announced as Chelsea’s new manager this week. The decision to hire the 41 year-old is as radical as any made by Roman Abramovich since his purchase of the club in 2003, and has already caused quite some consternation in an already divided fan base in the short-term as to the appropriateness of the move, while also creating an intriguing dynamic for the months and hopefully years…
Every season, up to thirty Chelsea youngsters go on the loan trail, looking for first team experience, carrying with them the feint hope that one day Chelsea and Jose Mourinho will deem them good enough for the first team. As ever, some loan moves are more successful than others. Some of Chelsea’s best young prospects have gone to clubs and failed to enhance their reputation. Chalobah had one to forget…
This was originally meant to be the first article of 2014, but was superseded by the news of Juan Mata’s sad departure for Manchester (a transfer which was finally completed yesterday). Chelsea Football Club appear to have sailed into calmer waters during the past six months. The return of Jose Mourinho, replacing the almost universally detested B*n*t*z, has delighted and pacified the supporters, and our outpouring of love for The…
This is a season where the cost of attending football has been under the spotlight like never before. As the Age of Austerity drags into its sixth year, even those supporters who are in relatively well paid employment are having to juggle increasingly high living costs, coupled with below-inflation wage rises – and that’s if you’re lucky. The Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) launched their ‘SCORE’ campaign (motto: Twenty’s Plenty’) in…
The demographic among the supporter base at Chelsea FC resolutely remains middle-aged, male and white. The young men who were the fighters of the 70s and 80s are now not only fathers, but in some cases grandfathers. They constitute some of our most vocal and passionate supporters. Among our younger support (i.e. late teens and early 20s) there is a good proportion who “get” Chelsea. They flog themselves up and…
This week TheChels is having a natter with journalist, author, genealogist, Pitch Owners’ Director and Chelsea FC’s official historian, Rick Glanvill. TC: These days you’re probably best known as Chelsea’s club historian, but your background is journalism. How did you start your career? RG: I always wanted to be a writer and my degree is in communications but I was earning a decent living as a nightclub DJ. I had…
I have to admit to a strange feeling before games these days. I only realised I’d had this feeling before the Manchester United game. But it had been there from the start of the season. It was a feeling I didn’t wholly understand. And then again, before the European Super Cup Final. Something was missing. There were the usual matchday feelings of course. Excitement, building up as the day wore…
History. The thing that the Scousers (and others) accuse us of not having. There is a banner that says ‘making history, not re-living it’, and there was a sense of a bit of both in SW6 on Saturday, when the first AGM of the Chelsea Supporters Trust was held in the Attenborough Suite at Stamford Bridge, preceded by a hugely enjoyable tour of West Brompton Cemetery led by Chelsea FC…
Following the dispiriting gloom of the Benitez era, the return of the prodigal One seems to have brought with it an optimism long missed around Stamford Bridge. Pre-season results have been mostly encouraging, with a returning batch of loaned youngsters adding competition and depth to last season’s stretched squad. Bookies have installed the club as favourites for the title in a season where managerial upheaval has made unknown quantities of…
To most Chelsea supporters, Saturday 17th August is simply the day before the first home game of the season against Hull. In fact, it’s a historic day for the club’s fans. The first Annual General Meeting of the Chelsea Supporters Trust will take place at 2.00pm in the Attenborough Suite of the Copthorne Hotel at Stamford Bridge. This, in reality, is the day that the Working Group have spent in…