50 Years of Chelsea: 1979-80

The Chelsea FanCast looks back, season by season, to 50 Years of Chelsea history from 1970 to the present day.

Stamford Chidge is joined by Jonathan Kydd and Clayton Beerman to look back at the 1979-80 season.

Chelsea enters the last season of a very turbulent decade, back in Division Two and as the song says, “we won’t be here for long”. Well, that was the thinking anyway!

England’s 1966 World Cup final hat-trick hero, Geoff Hurst is appointed manager with his West Ham side kick Bobby Gould as assistant.

When Chelsea hammered Leyton Orient 7-3 it looked like some of Hurst’s goalscoring magic was rubbing off on the players. In fact, by the end of December, Chelsea were sitting top of the division and were still top with only one month of the season to go.

Bolstered by Clive Walker’s goals in a fine season for the winger who was Chelsea’s POTY, Chelsea had to beat Oldham in their final match to secure promotion. They did, but sadly, Birmingham and Sunderland both drew which was enough to leave Chelsea agonisingly 1 point off the promotion places. Had Mickey Droy not hit the post in the 1st match of the season v Sunderland, we’d have been promoted.

Still, we had the antics of Petar Borota our mad Yugoslavian keeper to keep us entertained and with Colin Lee, Colin Viljoen and Colin Pates debuting in the season, how many teams could lay claim to having three Colin’s in the team?

To help us celebrate 50 Years of Chelsea we've partnered with 3Retro who have a superb collection of Chelsea retro gear and are offering 10% OFF when you use the 3RETRO10 code and if you order over £50 of merch you get FREE UK delivery.

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