Chelsea's regular kit
colours are royal blue shirts and shorts with white socks. The club's
crest has been changed several times in attempts to re-brand the club
and modernise its image. The current crest, featuring a ceremonial lion
rampant regardant holding a staff, is a modification of the one
introduced in the early 1950s. The club has sustained the fifth highest average all-time attendance in English Football. Their average home gate for the 2011-12 season was 41,478, the sixth highest in the Premier League. In April 2012 it was ranked by Forbes Magazine as the seventh most valuable club in the world, at £473 million ($761 million). Since 2003, Chelsea have been owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
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HISTORY
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. As there was already a team named Fulham in the borough, the
name of the adjacent borough of Chelsea was chosen for the new club,
having also considered names like
Kensington FC,
Stamford Bridge FC and
London FC.
Chelsea were founded on 10 March 1905 at The Rising Sun pub (now The Butcher's Hook),
opposite the present-day main entrance to the ground on Fulham Road, and were elected to the Football League shortly afterwards.
The club won promotion to the First Division in their second season,
and yo-yoed between the First and Second Divisions in their early years.
They reached the 1915 FA Cup Final, where they lost to
Sheffield United at Old Trafford, and finished 3rd in the First Division in 1920, the club's best league campaign to that point.
Chelsea attracted large crowds
and had a reputation for signing big-name players,
but success continued to elude the club in the inter-war years. Former Arsenal and England centre-forward
Ted Drake became manager in 1952 and proceeded to modernise the club. He removed the club's Chelsea pensioner
crest, improved the youth set-up and training regime, rebuilt the side
with shrewd signings from the lower divisions and amateur leagues, and
led Chelsea to their first major trophy success – the League
championship – in 1954–55. The following season saw UEFA create the
European Champion's Cup, but after objections from
The Football League and the FA Chelsea were persuaded to withdraw from the competition before it started.
Chelsea failed to build on this success, and spent the remainder of the
1950s in mid-table. Drake was dismissed in 1961 and replaced by
player-coach
Tommy Docherty.
Docherty built a new team around the group of talented young players
emerging from the club's youth set-up and Chelsea challenged for honours
throughout the 1960s, enduring several near-misses. They were on course
for a treble of League, FA Cup and League Cup going into the final
stages of the 1964–65 season, winning the League Cup but faltering late
on in the other two.
In three seasons the side were beaten in three major semi-finals and were FA Cup runners-up. Under Docherty's successor,
Dave Sexton, Chelsea won the
FA Cup in 1970, beating
Leeds United 2–1 in a final replay. Chelsea took their first European honour, a UEFA Cup Winner's Cup triumph, the following year, with another replayed win, this time over
Real Madrid in Athens.
The late 1970s through to the 1980s was a turbulent period for
Chelsea. An ambitious redevelopment of Stamford Bridge threatened the
financial stability of the club,
star players were sold and the team were relegated. Further problems were caused by a notorious hooligan element among the support, which was to plague the club throughout the decade.
In 1982, Chelsea were, at the nadir of their fortunes, acquired by
Ken Beates
for the nominal sum of £1, although by now the Stamford Bridge freehold
had been sold to property developers, meaning the club faced losing
their home.
On the pitch, the team had fared little better, coming close to relegation to the Third Division for the first time, but in 1983 manager John Neal put together an impressive new team for minimal outlay. Chelsea won the Second Division
title in 1983–84 and established themselves in the top division, before
being relegated again in 1988. The club bounced back immediately by
winning the Second Division championship in 1988–89.
After a long-running legal battle, Bates reunited the stadium
freehold with the club in 1992 by doing a deal with the banks of the
property developers, who had been bankrupted by a market crash.
Chelsea's form in the new Premier League was unconvincing, although they did reach the
1994 FA Cup Final. It was not until the appointment of Ruud Gullit as player-manager in 1996 that their fortunes changed. He added several top international players to the side, as the club
won the FA Cup in 1997 and established themselves as one of England's top sides again. Gullit was replaced by
Gianluca Vialli, who led the team to victory in the League Cup Final and the Cup Winner's Cup Final in 1998, the
FA Cup in 2000 and their first appearance in the UEFA Champions League. Vialli was sacked in favour of Claudio Ranieri
, who guided Chelsea to the
2002 FA Cup Final and Champions League qualification in 2002–03.
2004-05
and 2005-06
), in addition to winning an FA Cup (2007) and two League Cups (2005 and 2007
). In September 2007, Mourinho was replaced by Avram Grant, who led the club to their first UEFA Champions League Final, which they lost on penalties
to Manchester United
. In 2009, caretaker manager Guus Hiddink
guided Chelsea to another FA Cup success
, and in 2009-10, his successor Carlo Ancelotti led them to their first league and FA Cup
"Double", becoming the first English club to score 100 league goals in a season since 1963
. In June 2011, Ancelotti was sacked and replaced by Andre Villas-Boas, who was in turn dismissed in March 2012. Under caretaker manager Roberto Di Mateo, Chelsea won their seventh FA Cup, and their first UEFA Champions League title
, beating Bayern Munich
4–3 on penalties, the first London club to win the trophy.
