“Walk in silence
Don’t walk away, in silence”Songwriters: Bernard Sumner / Ian Kevin Curtis / Peter Hook / Stephen Paul David Morris
Atmosphere lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group
Released in March 1980, ‘Atmosphere’ was undoubtedly one of Joy Division’s finest four minutes and ten seconds and it seems appropriate to be discussing the ‘1980’s’. Joy Division’s fellow Mancunians, of the red persuasion, having lost 3-1 to Arsenal this weekend, were condemned to a fourth consecutive away defeat in the top-flight for the first time since 1981.
But before Chelsea supporters get too carried away, titter ye not. Arsenal’s 4:2 defeat of Chelsea last week meant we have lost three consecutive home matches for the first time since November 1993, when the third game in that sequence was a 2-0 defeat by Arsenal.
Nostalgia can get you a bit misty eyed, but as those two stats prove, sometimes, the past is best left well alone.
Arsenal supporters, never knowingly miscommunicating their own sense of irony, belted out “just like the old days, there’s nobody here” at the Chelsea supporters inside Stamford Bridge, which thanks to the Government sanctions, could only accommodate season ticket holders with members being unable to buy tickets for the game. As a result, the official attendance was a mere 32,249.
I seem to recall, in the old days to which the witty Gooner banter merchants were surely referring, Highbury witnessed “Chelsea Here; Chelsea There” in all four corners of the ground on many an occasion. Nevertheless, 32,429 at Stamford Bridge for a league match, does remind one of the old days; but not quite as old as you might think.
You only have to go back to the 1998 season where Chelsea’s average attendance of 32,900 was roughly the same as it was against Arsenal last week. Of course, the mitigating factor then was that Stamford Bridge had a reduced capacity between 1994 and 2001 as the Shed End, Matthew Harding Stand and West Stand were all redeveloped.
This goes someway to explaining Chelsea’s average attendances between 1995 and 1997 being 21,057; 25,466; 27,001. But how can we explain the apparently low average attendances between 1991 and 1994, which, respectively were 20,738; 18,684; 18,787 and 19,416.
Maybe this is what the humorous latte drinking North Londoner’s were referring to?
It does seem strange on the face of it. Chelsea had been on the up, on the pitch, during the mid to late ‘80’s. Jon Neal’s team roared back to Division One in 1984 and more than looked the part for a couple of years. We had the typical Chelsea blip in 1988, getting relegated by accident, in a play-off against Middlesbrough, but the next season was one of my favourites as we were promoted straight back as Champions with a record points total.
Chelsea were back (again) and the future still looked bright. Record signings and decent players such as Denis Wise, Andy Townsend, Kerry Dixon, Gordon Durie, Tony Dorigo and Dave Beasant should have given rise to great optimism for the 1990-1991 season, especially as Chelsea had finished 5th on their return to Division One. This, you would have thought, would have translated into bigger crowds.
That season ended up being horribly inconsistent: doing the double over Man United, beating Liverpool to more-or-less end their titles hopes and taking 4 points off the Spurs side of Gazza and Lineker (as well as thumping them 3-0 at White Hart Lane in the Quarter Final of the League Cup). The other side of the coin saw us lose to Oxford in the FA Cup, Luton in the league, and the horrible 7-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest. Chelsea had potential but the fact that the better, more consistent players such as Durie, Dorigo and Townsend wanted out proved that all was not right.
Maybe they saw what many Chelsea supporters were secretly feeling. There was nothing to look forward to; the club seemed to be going backwards; Ian Porterfield’s football was turgid and players who replaced the likes of Dixon were nowhere near good enough. After the highs and expectations of the mid-80’s maybe it dawned on many that they would never see Chelsea win a trophy in their lifetime and that reflected in the attendances.
Of course, it all changed with the 1994 FA Cup and 1995 European Cup Winner’s Cup runs and the appointment of Glen Hoddle and signings of Ruud Gullit and Mark Hughes and the rest, as they say, is history.
However, when looking at Chelsea and attendances, context, both within the club and football as a whole, is everything.
The club and its support had been in decline since the mid-70’s following the breakup of the 1970 FA Cup winning side. Average attendances fell from 40,342 in 1970 to 12,672 in 1983 thanks to spells in Division Two and nearly dropping down into Division Three; the building of the new East Stand nearly bankrupting the club; star players such as Ray Wilkins being sold as a consequence and inept managers such as Danny Blanchflower and Geoff Hurst doing what inept managers do, or not do. Hardly surprising that people couldn’t stomach this fare and voted with their feet. However, there were important external factors which caused the huge drop in attendances, and not just at Chelsea.
Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s hooliganism was so rife in football that it was labelled the ‘English Disease’. And Chelsea were at the forefront, certainly as far as the media and the public consciousness were concerned. There is no doubt that this had a profound effect on attendances for all clubs, not just Chelsea, and between 1981 and 1986 football crowds were at their the lowest since before 1914.
By way of comparison, Everton, Arsenal and Spurs, ‘Big Five’ clubs, averaged between 20,000 and 25,000 between 1983 and 1986. They were winning FA Cups, finishing in the top half of Division One and playing in Europe. Chelsea, averaged 13,132 in 1982 with their 2nd lowest position of all time; 12,672 in 1983 with their lowest league position ever and 21,120 in 1984 when they were promoted. For further context Stamford Bridge was literally falling down with its very existence continually in doubt and Ken Bates was putting up electric fences, introducing membership cards and pricing out the Old School support with among the highest ticket prices in England.
Bringing us back to our current short-term predicament in terms of a reduced capacity, it is worth noting that Chelsea has the 6th highest average attendance of all time with 32, 531 (ironically very close to the attendance against Arsenal), behind Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and Newcastle.
Chelsea have also been the best supported club in the country by average attendance ten times between 1905 and 1955, in a period when we only won one trophy, the League title of 1955, and a third-place finish in 1920. Furthermore, we were the best supported team in a relegation year (1924) and a season in Division Two (1926). Not bad for a bunch of plastic ‘Jonny Come Lately’ glory hunters with no history!
When all is said and done, it doesn’t really matter how many people we have at Stamford Bridge. What matters is the noise they make and the support they give. Perhaps Arsenal’s jibe would have hit the mark more accurately had it been ‘nobody can hear’ rather than ‘there’s nobody here’. Which is how we find ourselves back to the beginning of this piece: Atmosphere.
There are so many possible explanations for the sometimes soporific atmosphere experienced at Stamford Bridge, and Wembley for that matter.
In truth it wasn’t as bad as was portrayed against Arsenal, but nevertheless, the old theories came spewing forth. All season ticket holders are old, and the members are young; the old don’t sing and the young do, apparently.
Well, I suspect there is some truth in that. Us poor ‘old ‘uns’ just don’t have the ‘vim’ and vigour of our younger compatriots and as far as Stamford Bridge season ticket holders go, there are more over 55-year-olds than at any club in the country. Rightly or wrongly, maybe we feel we’ve done our bit.
I suspect that a bigger issue is the changing demographic at most big football club’s these days. Success attracts a different crowd, as has the commercialisation and sanitisation of football generally. Maybe ‘newer’ football fans just don’t like making a noise…or don’t know the words.
A more worrying theory might be a general apathy with football or worse a sense of entitlement. Success, like familiarity, in a sense, breeds contempt. We expect Chelsea to win, comfortably, and when they don’t it either renders the crowd speechless, contemptuous, or incredulous. Whichever it is, it leads to silence.
I’ve been writing about the declining atmosphere at football for well over ten years now and I’m still no nearer to a solution. Atmosphere, after all, is ethereal and almost undefinable. At Chelsea, when it’s good, it’s very, very good and when it’s bad it’s terrible.
Maybe the atmosphere we knew when we were younger is exactly like our younger selves; gone forever. But if there’s a chance that it can be addressed, if it is, in fact, tangible, then it should be one of the first things on the new owners list of things to address.
As Joy Division prophetically said “Don’t walk away in silence; Don’t walk away…”
After all, it would be tragic for all of us who love football, Chelsea and Stamford Bridge to just walk away having let the atmosphere die a silent death.
NB: I am indebted to ‘Attendances – the good, the bad and the ugly’ (February 5, 2014) and ensuing thread by ‘Cobham’ in Chelsea FC Vintage on ShedEnd.Com for many of the opinions, facts and figures included above.
First published in cfcuk May 2022
