True Blues — Chelsea FC
ΕΛ

Season: 1910–11

Football League Second Division

League

Chelsea’s sixth season was the first back in the Second Division after the 1909–10 relegation.

Division
Football League Second Division (Tier 2)
Manager
David Calderhead
Top scorer (league)
Bob Whittingham (30)
Top scorer (all comps)
Bob Whittingham (34)
Avg. league attendance
24,611

Cups & Europe

FA Cup
Semi-finals
League Cup
—
Europe
—
Other
London Challenge Cup: Round 2 (beat Clapton 5–0, 19 Sep 1910; lost to Tottenham Hotspur 0–3, 10 Oct 1910); London Professional Charity Fund: lost to Tottenham Hotspur 0–3 (3 Oct 1910)

Notes

Chelsea’s sixth season was the first back in the Second Division after the 1909–10 relegation. David Calderhead remained secretary-manager throughout. The Pensioners finished 3rd of 20 with 49 points — 20 wins, 9 draws and 9 defeats, with 71 goals scored and 35 conceded — a strong return that still fell short of promotion. Only the top two went up: West Bromwich Albion took the title on 53 points and Bolton Wanderers followed on 51; Chelsea finished two points behind Bolton, with the best goal average in the division. At Stamford Bridge they were formidable. Seventeen home league wins, two draws and no defeats produced 48 goals scored and only seven conceded. Away form was harder: three wins, seven draws and nine defeats. The biggest league win was 7–0 against Lincoln City on 29 October 1910; the late slips included 0–2 at Bolton on 26 April and 1–3 at Gainsborough Trinity on the final day. Bob Whittingham, signed from Bradford City the previous April for a then-substantial fee, led the scoring with 30 league goals and 34 across the league and FA Cup. George Hilsdon was next among the regular league scorers. Whittingham’s haul made him the clear spearhead of Calderhead’s promotion push. The FA Cup brought Chelsea’s first semi-final. After a 0–0 home draw with Southern League Leyton on 14 January 1911 and a 2–0 replay win at Leyton five days later, they beat Chesterfield Town 4–1 on 4 February at Stamford Bridge — a tie drawn away but switched to the Bridge — then won 2–0 at Wolverhampton Wanderers and 3–1 at home to Swindon Town before 77,952, the season’s largest crowd. On 25 March 1911 at St Andrew’s, Birmingham, Newcastle United ended the run 3–0 in front of 34,000. Bounder’s season diary also records a London Challenge Cup path — Clapton 5–0 in round one, then 0–3 to Tottenham Hotspur in round two — and a 0–3 defeat by Tottenham in the London Professional Charity Fund; those lines are from that diary only. Average home league attendance was 24,611 on Bounder’s match gates (467,600 across 19 games), matching Wikipedia; European Football Statistics gives 24,515. The Bridge still drew the largest average crowds in the Second Division, but two points kept promotion out of reach.

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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