True Blues — Chelsea FC
ΕΛ

Season: 1909–10

Football League First Division

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League

Chelsea’s fifth season brought the first relegation in the club’s young history.

Division
Football League First Division (Tier 1)
Manager
David Calderhead
Top scorer (league)
Jimmy Windridge (6)
Top scorer (all comps)
Jimmy Windridge (6)
Avg. league attendance
30,211

Cups & Europe

FA Cup
Second round
League Cup
—
Europe
—
Other
London Challenge Cup: Round 2 (beat Brentford 6–0, 20 Sep 1909; lost to Queens Park Rangers 0–1, 11 Oct 1909)

Notes

Chelsea’s fifth season brought the first relegation in the club’s young history. After three years in the First Division, the Pensioners finished 19th of 20 with 29 points: 11 wins, 7 draws and 20 defeats, with 47 goals scored and 70 conceded. They went down with Bolton Wanderers, two points behind Woolwich Arsenal and Middlesbrough. David Calderhead remained secretary-manager throughout. The gap between home and away tells much of the story. At Stamford Bridge Chelsea won ten league games and scored 32 goals; on their travels they won only once, 1–0 at Middlesbrough on 9 October 1909 through Evan Jones. Fifteen away defeats, including 1–5 at Liverpool in January and 2–5 at Bolton in February, left little room for recovery. There were brighter afternoons at the Bridge: 4–1 against Bristol City on 4 December, with two goals from the newly arrived Vivian Woodward, and another 4–1 against The Wednesday on 9 April. Jimmy Windridge led the scoring with six league goals, also the highest total across the league and FA Cup. Sam Downing, Arthur Wileman and Woodward each contributed five league goals. Woodward joined from Tottenham in November; Percy Humphreys moved in the opposite direction in December. That change of shirts would return to haunt Chelsea twice before the season was over. The FA Cup began with a 2–1 home win over Hull City on 15 January 1910, Ernest Williams and Billy Brawn scoring in front of 34,700. In the second round, on 5 February, Tottenham won 1–0 at Stamford Bridge through former Chelsea forward Humphreys, with 31,776 watching. This is the Tottenham cup tie that belongs to 1909–10, not the previous season. In the London Challenge Cup, Bounder’s season diary records a 6–0 win over Brentford on 20 September followed by a 0–1 defeat by Queens Park Rangers on 11 October, ending the run in round two. The final league game, at White Hart Lane on 30 April 1910, settled Chelsea’s fate. Windridge put them ahead, but Billy Minter equalised and Humphreys scored Tottenham’s winner: 2–1, survival for Spurs and relegation for Chelsea. Even in this difficult year the crowds kept coming. The home win over Newcastle United on 27 December drew the season’s largest gate, 70,000; the smallest home league crowd was 12,000 against Notts County on opening day. Bounder’s match gates give a home league average of 30,211 (574,000 across 19 games), matching Wikipedia; other compilations give 29,579 or 28,545, so the exact average remains disputed. The Bridge still drew the largest average league crowds in England on all three sets of figures — but support alone could not keep the team up.

Kits

Under review
Home
Away
Third—

Historical Football Kits dates the original Eton blue to September 1906 and a new home kit from 6 October 1906 (Nottingham Post report); a Chelsea programme for the Lincoln City game on 13 October 1906 already describes the colours as “blue and white”. Other accounts place the move to a darker royal blue as late as about 1912, so the exact shade worn from autumn 1906 is not settled — the swatch here still shows Eton blue. Maroon remained the change shirt. HFK also lists a one-off white change shirt “January 1907 v Worksop Town (FA Cup)”, but that tie was played on 11 January 1908; Chelsea’s only FA Cup opponent in 1906–07 was Lincoln City.

Illustration from hex colours (not official kit photography).

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History

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Sources

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