50 Years of Chelsea: 1978-79

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 Mark Meehan to look back at the 1978-79 season.

The 1978-79 was an in and out season in more ways than one. Still in Division One, under the management of Ken Shellito, Chelsea were still relying on youngsters coming up from the academy. Gary Chivers, Mikey Fillery, Jonny Bumstead, Mickey Nutton, David Stride and John Sitton all got promoted to the first team.

Bizarrely, Chelsea signed former Leeds and Everton maverick Duncan McKenzie, whose sole contribution to Chelsea was being pictured leaping over a Mini. A sadder return was the return of the King of Stamford Bridge, Peter ‘Ossie’ Osgood, who in truth, was a shadow of the player we knew and loved. Chelsea’s financial chickens had come home to roost as the disastrous overspend on the new East Stand had near bankrupted the club, while the North Stand was crumbling and was subject to a GLC safety order.

Things were no better on the pitch. With only 2 wins in the first 3 months of the season, Chelsea were bottom of the league by the turn of the year.

Shellito made way for Frank ‘The Tank’ Upton, for one day and then Danny Blanchflower, former Spurs double winning captain and now columnist for the Sunday Express was appointed manager to the astonishment of everyone, not least the players.

Blanchflower’s first match in charge saw Chelsea lose 7-2 away to Middlesbrough and shortly after by a 5-1 away defeat to Ipswich and rounded off toward the end of the season with a 6-0 defeat away to Forest and a 5-2 away defeat to Arsenal. Maybe Blanchflower should have got the players train with footballs rather than imaginary ones they trained with.

With 2 wins from the first 22 league games and only a further 3 wins all season, Chelsea’s worst ever performance in Division One saw them relegated bottom on 20 points from 42 games.

To round off a miserable season, Ray Wilkins was sold to Man Utd that summer and Peter Bonetti retired. If you’ve ever heard the expression “where were you when you were shit?”, the answer is the 1978-79 season.

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