With a crucial match in the title run in
against West Ham at the London Stadium – out first visit their in the Premier
League – coming up on Monday night, I thought it might be a good idea to write
a blog re-living some of our classic battles down the years with our London
rivals.
Chelsea v West Ham has always been a fierce
derby even though both teams would probably not consider each other their main
rivals – Chelsea would point to Spurs plus Liverpool and Arsenal in recent
years as their rivals, while West Ham would point to Spurs and Millwall. But
both sets of fans have always reserved a considerable amount of hate for each
other.
One of my earliest memories was a clash in
the first season that captured my imagination as a fan – the 1996/97 season.
The Ruud Gullit revolution was starting to take shape with Vialli, Leboeuf and
Di Matteo all brought in over the summer and suddenly supporting Chelsea was
started to feel exciting as we started to move away from the mid table obscurity
years of Hoddle. In the coming weeks before we faced West Ham in our final game
before Christmas on 21st December, we had added a new recruit – an
Italian by the name of Gianfranco Zola, signed from Parma. This player looked
skillful, diminutive and creative and little did we know seven years later he
would be leaving Chelsea a club legend. He was brought in to partner with
Vialli, who Gullit later admitted, was ‘not doing the business’. But Vialli
would be injured for West Hams visit to us and so it presented an opportunity
for Zola to partner up front with Mark Hughes …. little would have been anticipated
from that until the two developed such an incredible in sync partnership
together, that Vialli would pretty spend the remainder of the season on the
bench.
In the opening 6 minutes a low cross was
dummied by Zola for mark Hughes to turn and drill home a low shot for Chelsea
to lead. A good start, but what followed minutes later arguably was the moment
Zola became a legend as early as then with the Chelsea faithful. He had scored
one goal previously – a free kick against Everton (not counting the free kick
against Newcastle that Vialli nicked off him with his ‘hair’) – but this one
was so much better. A counter attack in which Hughes picked up the ball on the
halfway line and found Zola one on one with West Ham legend and hard man Julian
Dicks, with Zola sending him the wrong way not once, but twice in a mazy run
before drilling the ball home for 2-0. With a newly signed foreign player going
up against the legendary Dicks and coming out on top, it arguably proved to be
the end for Dicks who was moved on from West Ham the following summer. The Zola
Hughes partnership wasn’t done there though, but not before Hugo Porfiro fired
a long range left foot strike from outside the area past Keeper Frode Grodas
(remember him?) a minute after Zola’s goal. On 35 minutes Chelsea restored
their two goal advantage which West Ham would fail to come back from, as Zola
out on the wing, sent in a cross for a classic thumping Hughes header. Chelsea
would go on to lift the FA cup that season with the those two players spearing
the front line for much of that season and hand Chelsea their first silverware
for twenty six years, which would prove to be the springboard for much more cup
success in the following years.
The second match I’m going to look at is an
FA cup replay on 6th February 2002. The first match at the Bridge
had finished 1-1 with Kanoute cancelling out Hasselbaink’s opener. So Chelsea
had to travel to Upton Park at a time when a different kind of revolution took
place, years on from the ‘Ruud revolution’ and via Vialli’s reign, Claudio
Ranieri was now charged by Ken Bates with moving Chelsea forward after
seemingly going backwards during the Vialli years following rumors of player
unrest. A first season brought much transition but this season Ranieri’s vision
was starting to take shape. The game struggled to come to life until 37 minutes
when Jermaine Defoe’s wild shot took an unlucky deflection off John Terry and
in off the bar via Cudicini – 1-0 to West ham. The lead lasted four minutes
though as a quickly taken Hasselbaink free kick fooled David James, who was
still organizing the wall, and flew into the net.
West Ham regained the lead though on 50
minutes as Don Hutchinson’s low angled shot was spilled by Cudicini into the
path of Defoe who side footed home into the empty net. Chelsea put West Ham
under pressure for an equalizer and got one through substitute Mikael Forsell
who intercepted Schemmel’s weak header back to the keeper to prod home under
James for 2-2. So four goals all courtesy of defensive/goalkeeping errors – an
entertaining game that looked to be heading for extra time. Up stepped future
captain John Terry to powerfully header home a Graham Le Saux corner in
stoppage time to give Chelsea victory and a place in round five of the FA cup. Terry
was a few years away from being named the clubs permanent captain and this
match winning performance was an early notification of how he would go onto be
the greatest and most influential captain in our history. Chelsea would go on
to reach the final this season as well, but would ultimately lose to Arsenal.
However with Chelsea gradually showing signs of improvement and playing a more
exciting brand of football under Ranieri following the slow build up play in
the Vialli years, it wouldn’t be long before (the following year in fact) Chelsea
would catch a certain Roman Abramovich’s attention and a whole new chapter in
CFC history would be about to be written – while West Ham were a year away from
relegation.
The final game I will recall is from 9th
April 2006 – when a very different Chelsea in the aforementioned Abramovich era,
would be closing in on a second successive title but following a slight wobble,
and with Man Utd breathing down our necks, the arrival of recently promoted West
Ham to the Bridge was not the welcome fixture on paper that it previously would
have been. I picked this fixture out because it featured a fantastic
performance from under fire striker at the time, Didier Drogba, who produced
one of his best performances in a Chelsea shirt at a time when it looked as
though he might leave.
The game did not start well for us as James
Collins headed home near post from a corner to put West Ham 1-0 after 10
minutes. With Chelsea dropping points recently and with Man Utd going on one of
their traditional end of season winning runs, it was starting to look
worryingly like Chelsea’s title challenge might start to falter. That worry
looked more likely when Maniche was given a straight red card seven minutes
later for a lunging challenge on Scaloni. So 1-0 down and down to ten men, not
looking good but Drogba had other ideas. After 28 minutes, a long ball from
Lampard found Drogba who went through on goal but saw his shot blocked by
Hislop, only for the ball to ricochet back into his path for him to slot the
ball home for 1-1. Just three minutes later, the West Ham fans who had been so
boisterous at the start of the match, were stunned into silence when Drogba
fired a low cross across the penalty area which found its way to Hernan Crespo
at the far post to tap in and put the ten men ahead.
The second half showed Chelsea as the
champions they were, and the champions they were soon to be as they put West
Ham away despite having one player less. On 54 minutes a William Gallas shot
from the edge of the area came crashing off the bar straight into the path of
our other centre back Terry who volleyed home for 3-1. On 69 minutes the game
was sealed when Robben’s deflected free kick was headed down into the path of
Gallas who eventually got his goal and prodded home from close range. There was
no doubt who the star of the day was – Didier Drogba who after arriving for a
substantial fee of twenty four million, had somewhat struggled in his first
couple of seasons and around this time had been touted for a move. But with
this being a stand out performance that displayed his true qualities, Drogba
ended up staying, winning the golden boot the following season and when on to
become voted the greatest player in our history (replacing the previous winner
Zola) whose final kick before his (first) departure in 2012 won us the
Champions League.
Chelsea have already been to the London
Stadium once this season when a fringe eleven lost 2-1 in the league cup, but
tomorrow should be a stronger eleven in a crucial game at a crucial point in
the season.
