Chelsea and Manchester City have more history than fan songs suggest
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Version 0 of 1. Apparently the two clubs sizing each other up at Stamford Bridge on Saturday “ain’t got no history” if you believe the different variations of the song that follows them around the country now they are threatening to turn the Premier League into a duopoly. Perhaps this might be an appropriate time, then, to point out that Manchester City won their first FA Cup 26 years before Arsenal and their first League Cup 17 years earlier. Their first European trophy, the 1970 Cup Winners’ Cup, arrived before any of Liverpool’s. They broke the attendance record for the first time in 1924 and there are 110 years between the first and last of their major honours. Only two clubs, Blackburn Rovers (118 years) and Liverpool (111), have a longer span of success. Likewise, Chelsea’s supporters can probably be forgiven for feeling slightly bemused about the kind of chants that could be heard at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday. As it happened, Chelsea also lifted a European trophy before Liverpool. A plastic new-age club? Chelsea had the best average attendance in England 10 times from 1908 to 1955. They were the first team to average more than 40,000 during one season and their FA Cup final replay against Leeds in 1970 pulled in a television audience of 28 million, the best there has been for a club game in England. City have not done too badly either given that the crowd of 84,659 to watch an FA Cup tie against Stoke City in 1934 is still a record in English football. No history? Well, King George V chose Hyde Road, City’s first ground, when he became the first monarch to attend a game and if you go back even further into the Manchester Evening News archives you will find sepia-tinted clippings from 1902 when the club were raising money to keep Newton Heath going (and if you know your history, you will be aware what became of Newton Heath). Related: Manuel Pellegrini rejects José Mourinho’s Chelsea conspiracy theory What cannot be disputed, though, is that Chelsea versus City – Abramovich against Mansour, royal blue versus royal funding – is a very modern kind of rivalry. There is no great nostalgia here. Both teams endured slump periods before the money started pouring in – City losing to Lincoln, Wycombe and York to fall to 12th in the old third division in 1998; Chelsea drawing their lowest crowd, 6,009, against Leyton Orient in 1982 – and the clubs have shared few stand-out moments apart from one of Wembley’s great custard-pie finals. That was in the Full Members Cup in 1986 when both clubs were required to play a First Division match the previous day. Chelsea won 1-0 at Southampton while, for City, there was the small matter of a 2-2 draw at Manchester United before hotfooting it down to London. A strange set of events became even stranger when Chelsea ran up a 5-1 lead, then conceded three goals in the final six minutes and almost blew it. David Speedie had scored a hat-trick for Chelsea. Both teams wore their away kit and Colin Pates lifted a cup that is presumably kept somewhere near the back of Chelsea’s trophy cabinet these days. Gary James, the author of several distinguished books on Manchester’s football history, remembers the local paper laughing at City for even entering the competition. Twenty-nine years on, the clubs have much more regal ambitions now and will meet as first against second in the league knowing this kind of occasion could be the norm over the coming years. They still have shared enemies – one, Manchester United and, two, Uefa’s financial fair play restrictions – but, increasingly, it is not the team from Old Trafford they measure themselves against but one another. José Mourinho might not be talking to the media at the moment but the mind goes back to an audience with Chelsea’s manager on the day he returned to the club, in 2013, and a question about how the Premier League had changed since the influx of Abu Dhabi money. “It’s different,” he said. “In terms of quality, I don’t think it’s better. In terms of quality, we all have to work hard to improve it. But in terms of competitiveness, it’s harder. Before, there were three teams. Who is first, who is second, who is third? Everyone knew it would be between us, United or Arsenal. Now City have appeared with this fantastic economical power that helped them to go up so fast. The same way as Mr Abramovich did here. You were all writing about Chelsea buying and buying and buying success, so probably you will do the same now with other teams who go in that direction.” That was Mourinho’s first press conference and already it felt like he was firing the first shots and challenging his audience to think badly of City. Related: Juan Cuadrado set to undergo Chelsea medical ahead of £23.3m move Within a few months Manuel Pellegrini was declaring that he would not respond to anything more Mourinho had to say. Yet, in his more understated way, Pellegrini still has his own methods for riling his old adversary. After the 1-1 draw in Manchester this season he described Chelsea as playing like “a small team” and compared their style to Stoke City’s. Mourinho bit back. “Pellegrino? Many times he says he never speaks about me and my team but he keeps doing the same thing.” Note the “Pellegrino”. Getting his rival’s name wrong is a familiar tactic from Chelsea’s manager. Pellegrini’s favourite ploy is to reiterate he will not talk about Mourinho, as if he wants to rise above such trivialities, yet still manage to disparage him in more subtle ways. He now says, for example, he regrets what he said after September’s game, just not perhaps because of the reasons you might imagine. “It was a mistake to compare with Stoke. My mistake. Stoke has another style and they beat us here at the Etihad.” There was nothing even slightly conciliatory towards Chelsea in that sentence and there was another revealing line when he was asked why he generally likes to refrain from engaging Mourinho through the media. “The ethical way is the best way for me,” he said. “It is not the only way. Maybe you [other managers] think you can take advantage but, for me, I don’t think it’s the normal way or the fair way. Ethics.” Pellegrini will be acutely aware that taking the moral high ground is a sure way to get under Mourinho’s skin. City’s manager was smiling broadly when he walked in and, though he insisted that was not because Diego Costa’s ban had been announced a few minutes earlier, it was difficult not to think he was being slightly economical with the truth when he said it would not matter to Chelsea that their leading scorer was out of the match. Costa’s battle with Vincent Kompany was the highlight of the first game, including a marvellous moment when they could be seen jostling for the ball like two feuding stags, giving everything in a blur of brute strength before City’s captain came away with the ball and his opponent offered a respectful hand, in the kind of sporting gesture that has not often been seen from him since. Kompany has regressed since then, troubled by recurring injury issues, and there is at least one Premier League manager who has privately pointed out a number of imperfections, in particular the way the City captain is drawn to the ball too often, perhaps slightly too keen to dominate his area of the pitch, and sometimes not having enough appreciation of where his partner might be. Costa, one suspects, would have been eager to find out. What Pellegrini said about Costa was good advice, however, and should not be mistaken for a rival manager rubbing it in. “I hope the punishment will be a good thing for him to change. He doesn’t need to be this way.” Related: Vincent Kompany needs his best for Manchester City against Chelsea | Jamie Jackson Mourinho might not want to listen but it is the player the Chelsea manager should be aggrieved with, not the Football Association or the television pundits he has grown to resent. The big games are generally settled by big players and there is a reasonable case to think this is the most significant occasion involving these clubs since the 1971 Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final, which Chelsea won. In that respect, Chelsea’s supporters must feel slightly uneasy about the thought of Frank Lampard lining up against them, especially when it was their former player who scored City’s equaliser in September. “Wishing Frank Lampard the very best of luck in New York!” Chelsea’s Twitter feed chirped on 24 July. If only they – like the rest of us – had known. |