True Blues — Chelsea FC
ΕΛ

Season: 1923–24

Football League First Division

↓

League

Chelsea’s fifteenth competitive season ended in the club’s first peacetime relegation.

Division
Football League First Division (Tier 1)
Manager
David Calderhead
Top scorer (league)
Andy Wilson (5)
Top scorer (all comps)
Andy Wilson (6)
Avg. league attendance
32,048

Cups & Europe

FA Cup
First round
League Cup
—
Europe
—
Other
London Challenge Cup: Round 1 (lost to Clapton Orient 1–3, 22 Oct 1923); London Professional Charity Fund: lost to Fulham 1–3 (26 Sep 1923)

Notes

Chelsea’s fifteenth competitive season ended in the club’s first peacetime relegation. David Calderhead remained secretary-manager throughout. The First Division still had 22 clubs. The Pensioners finished 21st of 22 with 32 points — 9 wins, 14 draws and 19 defeats, 31 goals scored and 53 conceded — level on points with Nottingham Forest but behind on goal average (0.584 to Forest’s 0.656), so Forest stayed up in 20th and Chelsea went down with Middlesbrough (22 pts). Huddersfield Town were champions on 57, level with Cardiff City but ahead on goal average. FCHD, Bounder’s final table and the 1923–24 Football League page agree. Home form was not disastrous — 7 wins, 9 draws and 5 defeats (23–21) — but away from Stamford Bridge the attack almost dried up: 2 wins, 5 draws and 14 defeats (8–32). Andy Wilson, signed from Middlesbrough for £6,500 on 28 November 1923, led the scoring with 5 league goals and 1 in the FA Cup — 6 in all competitions. It was a thin year in front of goal: only 31 league strikes. The worst afternoon was 0–6 at home to Notts County on 9 February; the best was 4–1 against Sunderland on 26 April, part of a useless late surge of four straight wins that could not undo the earlier damage. Bounder’s home league average was 32,048 (673,000 across 21 games), matching the Wikipedia season average; European Football Statistics has 30,895. Highest and lowest home league gates of 50,000 (West Ham, 20 October) and 15,000 (Notts County, 9 February) agree across Bounder and Wikipedia. The FA Cup ended in the first round: Southampton were held 1–1 at the Bridge before winning the replay 2–0 at The Dell on 16 January 1924 (Wilson scored in the first tie). Wikipedia’s season infobox wrongly labels the exit “Second round”; FCHD, Bounder, TheChels and the List of Chelsea F.C. seasons all have Round 1 / R1. Bounder’s season diary also records a London Challenge Cup exit in Round 1 to Clapton Orient and a London Professional Charity Fund defeat to Fulham; those lines come from that diary only. Relegation on goal average closed Chelsea’s unbroken First Division run since the post-war return — and opened six seasons in the Second Division.

Kits

Under review
Home
Away
Third—

Historical Football Kits shows a distinct 1912–1914 home panel at the start of this span and a further 1914–1918 panel covering the wartime seasons: royal blue shirt with white shorts (socks not settled in text). Maroon remained the change colour into 1912–1914 A; HFK’s wartime panel is labelled within the same royal-blue era. Some accounts place the darkening from pale/Eton blue earlier (see the 1906–1912 row); the archive therefore starts the royal-blue row at 1912–13 without claiming an exact switch date or inventing a shade beyond HFK’s royal-blue labelling.

Illustration from hex colours (not official kit photography).

On this day (related years)

All On this day →

History

Eras, trophies, and great matches in the History section.

Explore history →

Sources

← Back to season archive