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.
The author:
HARRY HARRIS is one of the foremost journalists of his generation, behind sensational headlines during his time as Chief Sports Writer at the Daily Mirror and Daily Express. He grew up a Spurs fan and landed his dream job on the Tottenham Weekly Herald exclusively following the club during a tumultuous period which saw the retirement of legendary manager Bill Nicholson. In time Harry moved on to the Daily Mail before arriving at the Mirror where he became Robert Maxwell’s eyes and ears in the football world. His investigations into Terry Venables and his closeness to successive Spurs owners Irving Scholar and Alan Sugar, gave him a unique insight into the crises affecting the club as they struggled to keep up in the Premier League era but made him a controversial figure among a section of Spurs supporters.
PAUL TREVILLION has devised and drawn thousands of sporting features since the early 1950’s and over his eight decades in sport, has become known as the ‘Master of Movement’ for his unique ability to convey dynamic movement in a static image and bring the personality of a subject to life. His extraordinary artistic talent was discovered at a very young age and he was drawing for Eagle, Tiger and the Spurs supporters magazine, The Lilywhite, while still a school boy and went on to revolutionise Roy of the Rovers in the 1960s and supplied illustrations for most of Fleet Street for the next six decades. A living legend, Paul recently turned 90 but remains an enthusiastic follower of Tottenham having seen his first game aged just three years old.
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Empire Publications
24 x 22 cm
Hardback
320 pages
November 2024
English
9781915616203
