Chelsea vs. Liverpool : 4 May 2025.
We were in for an alluring climax to the season. With two straight wins in the league on the bounce – not anticipated by me and probably many more – we were right in the thick of it in the scramble for Champions League and Europa League placings. Our next match, our ninth league game in London on the spin, was against newly crowned Champions Liverpool.
While huge parts of our Chelsea nation obsessed about the guard of honour, I shrugged my shoulders; it would all be over in less than ten seconds.
What with the closure of the District Line south to Wimbledon, there was a change of plan for our pre-match. “The Eight Bells” was jettisoned in favour of “The Tommy Tucker”, a mere Ian Hutchinson throw-in from the West Stand forecourt on Moore Park Road. I dropped PD and Parky right outside at just before 11am and then switched back on myself and drove over to my favourite breakfast spot, “The Half Moon Café” on Fulham Palace Road. If the other two lads could enjoy a four-hour session, then at least I could enjoy a full English.
I made it inside the pub at around 12.30pm, and the highlight of the time spent inside this busy boozer was the realisation that 1972 Olympic gold medallist Mary Peters was a few yards away. I can well remember watching her hop, skip and jump her way to her a gold in the pentathlon all those years ago.
For Mary Peters and Chelsea Football Club, Munich will always be a special city.
I left the pub earlier than the rest and reached the concourse just as Newcastle United scored a late, VAR-assisted penalty, to equalise at Brighton. Still, not to worry, a draw there did us a favour.
I reached my spot in The Sleepy Hollow, having smuggled my SLR in yet again. Before I settled in my seat, I took the camera out and took a few shots. However, a steward had evidently seen me and rather apologetically said “I have been told to tell you not to take use a professional camera.”
I smiled and replied “OK.”
At the end of the game, I would have taken 127 photos, but it was OK, I don’t get paid for any of the buggers.
I guess I was inside with a good forty-five minutes to go. There seemed to be many more obnoxious half-and-half scarves in the MHU than normal, and I feared the worst. I suspected an infiltration by you-know-who. Way atop our little section of seats, a father sat with his four-year-old son, who was wearing a Liverpool shirt under his jacket. I tut-tutted and tried to find someone else to be annoyed at. I didn’t take long. Sat behind me were four lads, two with half-and-halves, who seemed to be ignoring Chelsea’s pre-match kick-in down below us, instead focussing on the Liverpool players at The Shed End. By now Clive was alongside me, and we suggested to them that they were Liverpool fans. Their reply wasn’t in English, but they seemed to intimate that they were fans of football and soon dispersed. They must have had seats dotted all over the MHU.
The build-up to the match seemed to be rather low key in the stadium. The Liverpool fans were massed in the opposite corner, and one banner caught everyone’s attention.
IMAGINE BEING US.
Righty-oh.
The sun was out, but it was cold in the shadows. My light rain jacket kept out the chilly gusts.
By some odd twist of fate, forty years ago to the exact day, Chelsea were also pitted against Liverpool, but on that day in 1985 the match was at Anfield. More of that later.
The week before that game, on Saturday 27 April, Chelsea played Tottenham Hotspur at Stamford Bridge.
Let my 1984/85 retrospective recommence.
Chelsea vs. Tottenham Hotspur : 27 April 1985.
For all of the big names coming to play us in matches at Stamford Bridge in that return to the topflight, none was bigger than Tottenham. It was the one that was most-eagerly awaited of all. And yet the problems of that era contrived against us. After the near riot at the Chelsea vs. Sunderland Milk Cup semi final on 4 March, there was a full riot at the Luton Town vs. Millwall FA Cup tie on 13 March, and football hooliganism was the talk of the front and back pages. Considering the history of problems between the two teams, the league game with Tottenham was made all-ticket with an 11.30am kick-off.
The result of this, much to my complete sadness, was that this crunch match against our bitter rivals only drew a crowd of 26,310, a figure that I could hardly believe at the time.
Sigh.
I watched from the back row of the West Stand benches with my match day crew and took plenty of photos.
Before the game, as a celebration of our ninetieth birthday – admittedly a month and a half late – we were treated to some police dogs going through some manoeuvres on the pitch (how apt) but also the Red Devil parachute display team, and if I am not mistaken one of them managed to miss the pitch and end up on the West Stand roof. I am sure some wag wondered if the guilty parachutist was Alan Mayes. Some blue and white ballons were set off in front of the Tottenham fans and we all looked on in bewilderment.
“Let’s just get to the game.”
Ski-hats were all the rage in 1984/85 and one photo that I took of Alan, Dave, Rich and Leggo has done the rounds on many football sites over the years.
The match, in the end, wasn’t that special. Tottenham went ahead via Tony Galvin in the first half but a Pat Nevin free kick on seventy-five minutes gave us a share of the points.
A week later, the action took place two-hundred or so miles to the north.
Liverpool vs. Chelsea : 4 May 1984.
In 1984/1985, I only went to five away games due to finances, and the visit to Anfield was one of the highlights for sure. Liverpool were European Champions in 1984 and reigning League Champions too. They were in their pomp. Growing up as a child in the ‘seventies, and well before Chelsea fans grew tired of Liverpool’s cries of history, there were few stadia which enthralled me more than Anfield, with The Kop a beguiling wall of noise.
No gangways on The Kop, just bodies. A swaying mass of humanity.
Heading up to Liverpool, on an early-morning train from Stoke, I was excited and a little intimidated too. Catching a bus up to the stadium outside Lime Street was probably the nearest that I came to a footballing “rite of passage” in 1985. I was not conned into believing the media’s take that Scousers were loveable so-and-sos. I knew that Anfield could be a chilling away ground to visit. Famously, there was the “Cockneys Die” graffiti on the approach to Lime Street. My first real memory of Liverpool, the city, on that murky day forty years ago was that I was shocked to see so many shops with blinds, or rather metal shutters, to stave off robberies. It was the first time that I had seen such.
The mean streets of Liverpool? You bet.
I was deposited a few hundred yards from Anfield and took a few photos of the scene that greeted me. The local scallies – flared cords and Puma trainers by the look of it, all very 1985 – were prowling as I took a photograph of the old Kop.
Travelling around on trains during this season from my home in Stoke, I was well aware of the schism taking place in the casual subculture at the time. Sportswear was giving way to a more bohemian look in the north-west – flares were back in for a season or two, muted browns and greens, greys and blues, even tweed and corduroy flares – but this look never caught on in London.
At the time, I always maintained that it was like this :
London football – “look smart.”
Liverpool and Manchester football – “look different.”
I walked past The Kop and took a photo of the Kemlyn Road Stand, complete with newly arrived police horses. You can almost smell the gloom. Note the mast of the SS Great Eastern, which still hosts a fluttering flag on match days to this day.
The turnstiles were housed in a wall which had shards of glass on the top to deter fans from gaining free entry. Note the Chelsea supporters’ coach and the Sergio Tacchini top.
I paid my £2.50 and I was inside at 10.15am.
To complete this pictorial tour of Anfield before the game and to emphasise how bloody early I was on that Saturday morning – it was another 11.30am kick-off to deter excessive drinking and, ergo, hooliganism – there is a photograph of an empty, waiting, expectant Anfield. I guess that the photograph of the Chelsea squad in their suits was taken at an hour or so before kick-off. This is something we never see at games now; a Chelsea team inspecting the pitch before the game. I suspect that for many of the players, this would have been their first visit to Anfield too. Maybe that half-explains it.
My mate Glenn had travelled up with the Yeovil supporters coach for this game and we managed to find each other, and stand together, in the packed away segment at Anfield. My mates Alan, Paul and Swan stood close by. We were packed in like sardines on that terraced section of the Anfield Road that used to meet up with the Kemlyn Road, an odd mix of angles. Memorably, I remember that a lot of Chelsea lads – the firm, no doubt – had purchased seat tickets in the Anfield Road end, mere yards away from us, and a few punches were thrown. Even more memorably, I remember seeing a lad from Frome, Mark – a Liverpool supporter in my year at school – with two others from Frome only yards away in those very same seats.
The look we gave each other was priceless.
I see Mark at lots of Frome Town games to this day.
This was a cracking game. We went behind early on when Ronnie Whelan headed past Eddie Niedzwiecki and we soon conceded two more, both via Steve Nicol. We were 3-0 down after just ten minutes.
Welcome to Anfield.
We then played much better – my diary noted that it was the best we had played all season – and Nigel Spackman scored via a penalty at The Kop. Our fine play continued after the break, and Kerry Dixon slotted home in the six-yard box. Alas, a quick Liverpool break and a cross from their right. Ian Rush stuck out a leg to meet the ball at the near post and the ball looped over Niedzwiecki into the goal. My diary called it an exquisite finish and who am I to argue? I suppose, with hindsight, it was apt for Rush to score a goal at The Kop in my first ever game at Anfield. Writing these words forty years later, takes me right back. I can almost remember the gnawing inevitability of it.
Five minutes later, on about the sixty-fifth minute, Gordon Davies volleyed a low shot into the corner down below us.
Liverpool 4 Chelsea 3.
Wow.
We played so well in the remainder of the match but just couldn’t squeeze a fourth goal. We had outplayed them for a large part of the game. I remember being really surprised that Anfield was so quiet, and The Kop especially. Our little section seemed to be making all of the noise.
“EIO, EIO, EIO, EIO.”
“Ten Men Went To Mow.”
In that cramped, tight enclosure, this was a big moment in my life. I left Anfield exhausted, my throat sore, my brain fizzing with adrenalin, my senses heightened, drained.
We were all forced to take buses to Edge Hill, a train station a few miles out of Lime Street. Once there, I spotted a Chelsea lad that I recognised from Stoke, waiting with the rest of our mob, and preparing their next move, back into the city no doubt.
It took me forever to wait for a train that took me back to Crewe, where I needed to change for Stoke. I was, in fact, one of the last two Chelsea fans to leave Edge Hill that day.
These are some great memories of my first trip to Anfield.
Over the following forty years, I would return twenty-seven more times.
Back to 2025, and this was my fiftieth game against Liverpool at Stamford Bridge.
We lined up with a very strong formation, with the return of Romeo Lavia squeezing Moises Caicedo to right back and keeping Reece James on the bench.
Sanchez
Caicedo – Chalobah – Colwill – Cucurella
Lavia – Fernandez
Neto – Palmer – Madueke
Jackson
Liverpool were a mixture of familiar names and not-so-familiar names. I think I can name every single one of their 1985 squad, much less their 2025 version.
There were boos as both teams took to the pitch. I just stood silent with my hands in my pockets.
Within the first thirty seconds, or so it seemed, a pass from deep from Virgil Van Dijk set up Mo Salah. He attacked us from the right before attempting a low cross that was well gathered by Robert Sanchez.
This was a noisy Stamford Bridge, and the game had begun very lively. After just three minutes, we witnessed a beautiful move at pace. Romeo Lavia came away with the ball and slipped it through to Cole Palmer. The easy ball was chosen, outside to Pedro Neto. He advanced and I looked over to see Nicolas Jackson completely unmarked on the far post. However, after moving the ball on a few yards, Neto spotted the Lampardesque run of our current number eight and our Argentinian was able to kill the ball with his left foot and stroke it home with his right foot, past the diving Alisson, and Stamford Bridge went into orbit.
This was an open game, and Madueke’s shot whizzed past the post while Robert Sanchez saved well from Cody Gakpo.
Liverpool enjoyed a little spell around the fifteen-minute mark, but we were able to keep them at bay. I loved how Lavia and Caicedo were controlling the midfield. On twenty-three minutes, a magnificent sliding block from Trevoh Chalobah robbed Liverpool a shot on goal.
As the half-hour approached, I felt we were riding our luck a little as balls bounced into space from defensive blocks and clearances rather than at the feet of the opponents.
On thirty-one minutes, Noni Madueke played a one-two with Marc Cucurella, and his shot was inadvertently blocked by Jackson. The ball ran on to Caicedo, who dropped a lob onto the bar from the byline down near Parkyville.
On forty-one minutes, a snapshot from Neto hit the side netting. Just after, Jackson played in Madueke, who rounded Alisson to score, only for the goal to be chalked off for offside.
By now, the Liverpool lot, despite a flurry at the start, were quiet in their sunny corner of the stadium.
Liverpool did not seem to be creating as many threats as expected, and I was quietly confident at the break that we could hold on for a massive three points. I loved how Neto was playing, out wide, an old-fashioned winger, and Lavia, Caicedo and Enzo were a solid, fluid and combative three when we had the ball. Some of Jackson’s touches were, alas, woeful.
Into the second half, a magnificent burst from Madueke down in front of us – just a joy to watch – but a weak finish from that man Jackson. Just after, Nico slipped in the box. Just after, a fantastic dummy by Madueke out on the line, a little like Jadon Sancho at Palace, but he then gave the ball away cheaply.
Wingers are infuriating buggers, aren’t they?
At the other end, we watched a lovely old-fashioned tussle between Salah and Cucurella on the edge of our box.
Only one winner, there.
“He eats Paella, he drinks Estrella.”
On fifty-six minutes, Palmer shimmied into the right-hand side of the box and sent over a low cross towards Madueke. He touched the ball goalwards, but in the confusion that followed Van Dijk slashed at the ball and it ricocheted off Jarrell Quansah and into the goal, not that I had much of a clue what on Earth was going on. I just saw the net ripple.
It was an odd goal, in that nobody celebrated too quickly, as the spectre of VAR loomed over us all. The build-up to the goal included so many instances of potential VAR “moments” that I think it conditioned our thinking.
To our relief, no VAR, no delay, no problems.
But – VAR 1 Football 0.
Sigh.
Not to worry, we were up 2-0, and I had to ask the lads if they could remember the last time that we had beaten Liverpool in a league game at Stamford Bridge. Nobody could.
On the hour, Jackson worked himself into a great position but selfishly tried to poke the ball in from a very tight angle.
Liverpool, coming out of their shell now, enjoyed some chances. A great diving header from Levi Colwill denied them a shot on goal, and then they wasted a free header from a Salah cross.
On seventy minutes, another great slide from Our Trev denied them a shot. He was enjoying a magnificent game.
Another Liverpool header went wide.
This really was an open game.
On seventy-two minutes, Jadon Sancho replaced Nico, who is soon to enrol in the parachute regiment.
More Chelsea chances came and went. A shot from Madueke was blocked, a rasper from Sancho was saved well by Alisson, Palmer wriggled free and somehow hit the post from a ridiculously tight angle.
This was breathless stuff.
Another shot from Palmer, who looked rejuvenated.
“He wants it now.”
On seventy-eight minutes, Malo Gusto replaced Lavia, who had been a revelation.
On eighty-five minutes, a free header from Van Dijk, from an Alexis Mac Allister corner, and they were back in the game.
This caused our hearts to wobble, and as the game continued, we watched with increasing nervous concern. Just after, the next move, Palmer forced another save from Alisson, who was by far the busier ‘keeper.
A fine move, but Neto shot over.
On eighty-eight minutes, Reece James took over from Enzo, who had enjoyed another fantastic match.
The battle continued.
“COME ON CHELS.”
Six minutes of injury time was signalled.
Fackinell.
Not to worry, in the very final minute, Liverpool attempted to play the ball out from the back and Caicedo closed down and got to the ball just in front of a defender. The defender, however, got to Caicedo just before the ball.
Penalty.
Cole Palmer stroked it home, his first goal since January.
He ran towards the goal and turned towards the East Stand but I summoned up all of my psycho-kinetic powers to entice him over to us, under The Sleepy Hollow.
It worked.
Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap.
Just after, the final whistle.
Chelsea 3 Liverpool 1.
I spotted two of the four foreign lads sitting close by, full of smiles, and I felt I owed them an apology for thinking that they were Liverpool fans. I gave them the thumbs up. They reciprocated.
This was a lovely day and a lovely match, and perhaps the best performance of the season thus far. We bounced out of Stamford Bridge and I subconsciously found myself singing Chelsea songs on the stretch from the West Stand forecourt to the tube station, just like in the old times.
