Continuing our series ’50 Years of Chelsea’ looking back, season by season, from the FA Cup winning 1970 season to present day; Stamford Chidge is joined by Jonathan Kydd, Tony Glover and Dan Silver to look back at the 1986-87 season.
Having finished 6th in the previous 2 seasons in Division One, hopes were high for the new season. The squad had been strengthened with Steve Wicks, Roy Wegerle and Gordon Durie but changes were a foot and the regime of John Hollins and Ernie Walley was to lead to a fractious and ultimately disappointing season featuring a combination of baffling team selection and formations, poor man management, poor treatment of senior players and dispensing with talented youngsters.
For the first half of the season, Chelsea looked strong candidates for relegation only to pick up their form in the New Year, even though most of the team had handed in transfer requests.Finishing in 14th seemed to be the least of Chelsea’s problems as Nigel Spackman had already been ushered out of the door and the fear was that he would be followed by many other players.
Never a dull moment at Chelsea in a season enthusiastically remembered by Chidge, Jonathan, Tony and Dan and embellished with clips from the ‘Chelsea Special‘ interviews with Kerry Dixon and Paul Canoville.
