Soccer Accessory: Chelsea Versus Arsenal

Chelsea and Arsenal met in the Football League First Division at Stamford Bridge for the first time on November 9, 1907, 30 years after the stadium was first opened for the use of London Athletic Club. Chelsea won 2.1 with both goals from George Hilsdon. Arsenal's response came from Charlie Satterthwaite.

George Hilsdon was the first player to score 100 goals for Chelsea and a weather vane inspired by him can still be seen at Stamford Bridge. Legend has it that Chelsea will suffer "great misfortune" if it is ever taken away, as happened during fieldwork in the late 1970s, when Chelsea was in financial and footballing decline. Hilsdon was the victim of a gas attack on the Western Front in World War I and never played professional ประวัติทีมอาร์เซนอล, dying in 1941. His grave is unmarked.

This first match was seen by a record crowd for England's first division: 65,000. Arsenal were still known and based at Woolwich Arsenal at the time, but they had a large following for this match due to it also being King Edward VII's 66th birthday. The munitions factory, where many of the workers who followed the club were located, was closed during the day, leaving them free to travel to West London.

In fact, Arsenal could have been more local rivals to Chelsea than Tottenham Hotspur. A local businessman, Henry Norris, played an important role in the development of both clubs. Amassing a fortune from the estate Norris became a director and then president of Fulham. Another Edwardian businessman named Henry, Henry Augustus Mears, had acquired Stamford Bridge with a view to making it one of the best venues for association football in the capital, if not in the entire country. He offered Norris the opportunity to move Fulham FC to the ground, but Norris refused to pay the annual rent of around £ 1,500, so Mears created his own team, Chelsea FC, in 1905. If Norris hadn't been so careful with his money, it might not have been a Chelsea football club at all.

Five years later Norris, still the chairman of Fulham, became a majority shareholder in Woolwich Arsenal, which had gone into voluntary liquidation. Upon also becoming president of that London club, Norris proposed to merge them with Fulham to form a superclub. The move was blocked by the Football League, so Chelsea and Fulham remained local rivals instead of Chelsea and Arsenal.

This match between the two teams in 1907 was the first that two London clubs played in the First Division and thus the first major 'London derby'. All subsequent league matches between the two teams to date have been at the top level of English football (the former First Division and now the Premier League).

Woolwich Arsenal took revenge the following season with a 2.1 win on November 28, 1908, with Chelsea's goal again from George Hilsdon. The Gunners also won on Chelsea's turf in the subsequent season, before the first draw - 1.1 - in this league match on February 15, 1913. This was the last time the two teams met before Woolwich Arsenal. He will move to Highbury and change his name. to Arsenal.

In fact, after that victory in their first match, Chelsea did not win the match again until December 13, 1919 when they won 3.1 with goals from Robert McNeil, John Cock and Henry Ford in front of a large crowd of 60,000 spectators from postwar.

The game on October 12, 1935 was played in front of another huge crowd: 82,905, which was the second highest attendance recorded for an English league game. It ended in a 1.1 draw. Joseph Bambrick scored for Chelsea and Jack Crayston for Arsenal.