History Chealsea fc

Chelsea Football Club were founded on 14 March 1905 at The Rising Sun pub (now The Butcher's Hook) opposite today's main entrance to the ground on the Fulham Road. Since there was already a team named Fulham in the borough, the name of the adjacent borough, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, was settled on after London FC, Kensington FC and Stamford Bridge FC had been rejected.[2] Blue shirts were adopted by Mears, after the racing colors of Lord Chelsea, along with white shorts and dark blue socks.

Chelsea were denied entry to the Southern League following objections from Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur, so instead applied for admission to the Football League. Their candidacy was endorsed at the Football League AGM on 29 May 1905, with a speech by Parker, which emphasised the new club's financial stability and its impressive new stadium and team playing an important part.

Scottish international half-back John Tait Robertson was hired as the club's first player-manager. The club began with established players recruited from other teams, such as 22 stone goalkeeper William "Fatty" Foulke, who was an FA Cup winner with Sheffield United, and inside forward Jimmy Windridge who came from Small Heath. Chelsea's first league match took place away at Stockport County on 2 September 1905. They lost the game 1-0.[3] Their first home match was against Liverpool in a friendly. They won 4-0. Robertson also scored Chelsea's first competitive goal, in a 1-0 win against Blackpool.[4]

Chelsea finished a respectable 3rd in the Second Division in their first season, but Robertson steadily saw his position undermined by board room interference. He lost the power to select the team in November 1906, and by January 1907 he had left for Glossop.[5] Club secretary William Lewis took temporary charge and led the team to promotion at the end of the season, thanks largely to the goals of Windridge and George "Gatling Gun" Hilsdon. The latter was the first of many prolific strikers/forwards to play for Chelsea; he scored five goals on his debut and 27 in the promotion season en route to becoming the first player to score 100 goals for the club.
Chelsea beat West Brom at Stamford Bridge in September 1905

Lewis was succeeded by David Calderhead, who was to manage Chelsea for the next 26 years. The club's early seasons produced little success, and they yo-yoed between the First and Second divisions. They were relegated in 1909-10, promoted in 1911-12 and finished second-bottom in 1914-15, the final competitive season before football in England was abandoned owing to World War I. The club would normally have been relegated, but the league was expanded after the war, and Chelsea were invited to re-join the First Division.

In spite of their checkered fortunes, Chelsea became one of the best-supported teams in the country, with fans attracted by the team's reputation for playing entertaining attacking football and for signing star players, notably defensive back Ben Warren and striker Bob Whittingham. 67,000 people attended a league game against Manchester United on Good Friday 1906, a then-record for a football match in London.[6] 55,000 attended the first-ever London derby in the top division, against Woolwich Arsenal, a record for a First Division match. 77,952 attended a fourth round FA Cup tie against Swindon on 13 April 1911.

In 1915, under the shadow of the First World War, Chelsea reached their first FA Cup final, the so-called "Khaki" cup final, owing to the large number of uniformed soldiers in attendance. The match against Sheffield United was played in a sombre atmosphere and staged at Old Trafford in Manchester to avoid disruption in London. Chelsea, minus their top amateur striker, Vivian Woodward, who had sportingly insisted that the team who reached the final ought to keep their places, were seemingly unnerved by the occasion and outplayed for much of the match. Goalkeeper Jim Molyneux's mistake allowed United to score before half-time, but the Blues held out until the final six minutes, when their opponents added two more to win 3-0.