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Stories written by Kelvin Barker
Until relatively recently, I had always believed that in my many years of watching football, I had only seen Chelsea blatantly conned by a referee in domestic football once. Let’s face it, continental football has been corrupt for as long as it has existed, so the Frisk and Ovrebo fiascos in games when we dared [...]
October 25, 2011 /
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17 May 1997, what a fantastic day that was. The sun shone relentlessly, an early rendition of One Man Went to Mow by 40,000 Blues fans was climaxed by Robbie’s 42-second wonder strike, and Chelsea won their first major trophy for 26 years. During the hour-long post-match celebrations, surely the longest Wembley has ever seen, [...]
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I, for one, have thoroughly enjoyed the furore caused by the ignorant comments, and subsequent departures from Sky, of Richard Keys and Andy Gray.
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Growing up in 1970s Shepherds Bush, playing football in the street or the school playground of Miles Coverdale Primary School, I only ever wanted to be one person: Ian Hutchinson. Or to give him his correct moniker, according to the good denizens of the Stamford Bridge terraces: Ian Ian Hutchinson – so good they named [...]
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If you have been anywhere near a radio over the past forty years, the chances are that at some point you will have heard some smug music aficionado extolling the virtues of The Beatles’ album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Whether that particular record fully warrants the acclaim it tends to receive is a [...]
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The Filth and Fury – There was a time when I was more proud to be Chelsea because of the fans than the team. On the pitch we were perennial underachievers, often fielding players who had little or no interest in anything other than themselves. Off it, we followed those players to the ends of [...]
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The 1978/79 season was a truly dreadful one for Chelsea. Don’t take my word for it, look at the facts: a measly twenty points garnered from a 42-match league campaign, relegated at Easter and with 92 goals conceded throughout the season (champions Liverpool let in just 16!); these were dark days at Stamford Bridge.
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FA Cup Round 4 – 26 January 1997 – Chelsea 4 Liverpool 2 For the younger Chelsea fan, whose memory does not stretch back to the Seventies and Eighties, this must surely be the seminal domestic cup clash between the two sides. It was Ruud Gullit’s first season in charge and, backed by some big [...]
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FA Cup Round 5 – 13 February 1982 – Chelsea 2 Liverpool 0 The 1982 game didn’t have the goals and goalmouth drama of other cup clashes between the sides, but it was certainly the biggest giant-killing of the lot. Once again, Liverpool arrived as European champions, and this time they were facing a mid-table [...]
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I’m writing this the morning after the night before. Twelve hours ago I was leaping around joyously as the man who would inevitably be known by the inhabitants of Merseyside as ‘Branny-lad’, assured himself of a place in Chelsea folklore as he emerged as the unlikely hero of a magnificent Champions League win at Anfield. [...]
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It’s January 1984. Chelsea, after four years of Second Division mediocrity which almost culminated in relegation to Division Three just a few months earlier, have enjoyed an unexpectedly good first half of the 1983/84 season, rising to the top of Division Two, albeit briefly, on New Year’s Eve 1983. However, December wasn’t a good month [...]
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We welcomed Paul Canoville back to Stamford Bridge last Saturday. Our former left-winger did a book-signing in Borders in the morning, which was so well attended that the shop sold out of copies of his autobiography within an hour. He then spent some time on the cfcuk stall, where he was again well received, before [...]
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We buried my nan this week. She passed away a couple of weeks ago and on Tuesday we gave her a much deserved final send-off. Naturally it was a sad occasion for those of us present, but in reality, this was no occasion for self-pity, rather an opportunity to celebrate a life very much fulfilled [...]
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