blue_army

Fine for the fans who were going to sit on thier arse in front of the tv in the warm but what about the 3,000 of us who had tickets, we made the decision this morning that we were not going to drive and just forgo the tickets, still got 10" of snow and ice round my way alone let alone a potential very slow probable over 6 hour drive in these conditions... glad its postponed i can either get my money back or see if i can get holiday for the rearranged game

According to my local radio its the worst snow my area( bracknell) has had in 30 years...best part of a foot of snow and the best part is they announced as bbc news headline this lunchtime that the local authorities round here had only 4 hours of grit left so the roads the next few days will be fun!!

Took me nearly 3 hours to get home from work (4 miles) normally takes 10 mins ...where i live is the main cut through from the m3 to the m4 therefore the whole town is a standstill. I hate the snow

If anyone is able to get this done today/tonight please please PM me i need it for secret santa first thing wednesday

You will be fine if your shirt is under your coat.. it will be cold our there , the only trouble will be with the police ... you will be fine as your on the club trip and going straight on the coach at the end ... its more for if your walking about late at night in the city .

Still got loads of snow from friday good when you dont need to drive in it, to get on to the main road it is just solid ice .... not fun

Would probably be around £40 - £60 , more expensive at the moment due to the poor euro, they will just hand you your tickets on the plane oh and another bit of advice at euro aways ignore what your ticket says it is sit where you like despite what Chelsea may say on the plane ( fans unofficial rule sort of thing) I can not wait euro aways are great and some of the lock ins can result in some very funny memories ( we will be locked in the ground for around an hour after the game)

Got your Pm but thought id reply so everyone who is interested can see.. We should get 6k tickets so as long as your up early u will be fine, i booked with lufthansa but most cheap options would have gone yesterday as the flight companies like to put their prices up. To be honest as it would be your first euro away esp if travelling on your own i would advise to go on a charter trip either flight options £189 or with the club £195 ( bonus with the club is they gurantee you a ticket so you may prefer this) both are day trips leaving early from gatwick with transfers to the city center and then to the game with coaches waiting to take you back to the airport afterwards. I have used both companies and found them pretty much the same ..you get a free collectable badge with flight options with the two teams and dates on it .. ( i personally wont use flight options as they screwed my dad over meaning his plane for the champions league final never left gatwick!!) Just booked my hotel for the game and i think its the same as the Swedish blues so should be eventful and no doubt plenty of drink will be consumed.

Booked my flights to milan cant wait for the away leg going to be a fantastic trip

As soon as it goes to pens i expect us to loose now ... 1 win in 11 odd years what more can you expect and i have been at every shoot out we have had in that time

I got home at just gone 3 and had to get up for work at half 6.. am totally fucked now but the mental celebrations at the 3rd were worth it

The arsenal game WILL be sold by loyalty points e.g you have to have been to a certain number of games this season to be allowed to buy one! I would suggest the only way you will get a ticket is to buy from a ticketing agency ( dodgy) or buy one at about 5 times face value from a tout outside before the game ( £250 probably)

I choose to pay for private health care £80 a month it costs me and i only earn 18k a year, why ? i had an extremly bad experience with the NHS that has fucked me up for life 5 ops later and there is nothing more that can be done till im 50.. yes i did try to sue but convieniently they lost all the paper work when i discharged myself so couldnt prove anything just my word against there's. My nan a year before at the same hospital got amazing care and i couldnt fault them or thank them enough. The nhs is there for people who need it and is a lifesaver to a lot of the country.

Had finished my gourlay out banner, a 5 ft by ft st georges cross with chesea acrooss the middle ( 1 chepo from sports world) The top had GOURLAY OUT, the bottom OUR CLUB It was on the kitchen table drying and there was a load of loud fireworks which freked the dogs out and one jumped onto the table knocking black paint all over it and it looks a mess, no time to make another ill have to let my mouth do the talking all together now WE WANT GOURLAY OUT SAY WE WANT GOULAY OUT

A load of gourlay out banners on Sunday will do the trick...even if they are just bits of paper stuck together the club will see them, and a rousing chant of we want gourlay out by everyone . WE saved OUR GROUND once its time to do it again

A gourlay out banner will be in the MHU gate 17 alongside my bracknell blues flag

That would be great, need the picture for the middle of Dec for secret santa, let me knpw when your laptop is fixed thanks

I havn't and hadnt noticed either although if they are posted from the bridge i know Chelsea are having problems with the post, last week my mate went to collect his madrid away ticket and had a chat with mr not very helpful barnett who said the post office were only collecting 1 maybe 2 bags of post a day ( these bags are not big we have 2 a day at work go out and we are a small company with 20 staff) so they were having to prioritise tickets etc and just leave the rest

Is anyone here good with photoshop as i need it to sticth someone up as a secret santa at work i have a picture of celtic fans which i want his face put onto but i want it to look real etc..if anyone is good at this sort of thing could i send you the pictures Thanks

13 years ago today Matthew harding RIP - Mr Chelsea tragically lost his life as much as the people who run our club try to ignore that this great man ever existed it is up to us the fans to ensure he is always remembered as he was afterall one of us. RIP Matt Below is an article by Mark Worrall which sums up my feelings and of Chelsea fans everywhere My alarm clock-radio clicked on at 5.55am, the same as it always did. A couple of hours sleep hadn't done me too many favours, I rubbed my eyes and lay in the darkness waiting for the 6am news bulletin whilst questioning the sanity of my trip to Burnden Park the previous evening to watch Premier League Chelsea play Bolton Wanderers of what was then referred to as the First Division in a League Cup tie. The Blues had lost the match 2-1 in a pulsating encounter, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory after Scott Minto had given travelling fans some early cheer with a fabulous 2nd minute goal. Player-manager Ruud Gullit, making his first appearance of the season, had been Chelsea's best player, but the enterprising Trotters had dispatched their illustrious visitors with a gung-ho performance which had left those who'd bothered making the trip from London cursing the same-old-same-old. As maddening as mercury, that was Chelsea for you. 'Where were you when you were shit?' is a popular taunt levied at 21st Century Blues fans. 'How much time have you got?' I am prone to reply. The League Cup ha ha ha. Any Chelsea masochist of a certain age will regale you with tales of woe involving calamitous defeats at footballing outposts such as Crewe, Scunthorpe, Scarborough and Wigan … losing a days wages and a nights sleep following the Blues on the road to nowhere was a character-forming part of my life. 6am, I'm bolt upright, turning up the volume on the radio … shocked by the lead item on the news which is confirming an earlier report that Chelsea Football Club vice-chairman, Matthew Harding had been killed in a helicopter crash. Multi-millionaire Mr Harding, 42, pilot Michael Goss, 38, businessmen Tony Burridge, 39, and Raymond Deane, 43, and magazine journalist John Bauldie, 47, died instantly when the Twin Squirrel aircraft crashed into farmland near Middlewich, Cheshire, and burst into flames as it was carrying the party home from a Chelsea v Bolton cup tie. I was stunned. It wasn't as if Matthew was a personal friend or anything like that. I'd met him several times, but this had been well before he'd answered Ken Bates' plea for financial assistance. An ex-girlfriend had been in charge of the directors' dining room at Benfield's, the city-based re-insurance group of which Matthew was chairman and as such I used to get to go to various company knees-ups. As we all know a shared love of Chelsea transcends traditional barriers of class, not that Matthew had any airs and graces. Office-boy made good, rags to riches and all that … good luck to him. Matthew welcomed a chin-wag with a like minded Chelsea individual, and here was a man who'd first stood on the Shed as an eight-year old boy and followed them ever since … home and away. When the phone calls started as word got around that Matthew Harding had been tragically killed, I couldn't help thinking that if he hadn't been the millionaire businessman that he was, then he would still have been alive having journeyed to and from Burnden Park by more conventional means than helicopter. Come the end of the day, flowers, scarves, and notes of condolence festooned the Stamford Bridge gates as supporters gathered to share in their grief. The uninformed passerby might have thought a famous Chelsea footballer from yesteryear had died as opposed to the Club vice-chairman. But then the uninformed passerby could never have known just what Matthew Harding had come to mean to the supporters of Chelsea Football Club … and that was the reason I'd been stunned by the news at my waking hour. Ken Bates famously bought Chelsea for £1, and some fans are of the opinion that by the time he sold out to Roman Abramovich he'd transformed the club into one of the biggest names in European football. Others have suggested that old Greybeard took over a club with debts of £600,000 and increased them so spectacularly that it became a case of selling Chelsea to the Russian billionaire or watching them go to the wall in cataclysmic fashion. Bates' obsession with creating Chelsea Village almost bankrupted the club long before Mr A came on the scene and this precipitated Matthew Harding's formal involvement during the 1993-94 season. Ken Bates later recalled the telephone conversation which launched their unlikely and some might say unholy alliance. "Ken Bates here," he said. "I understand you're richer than I am, so we'd better get together." Harding, immediately weighed Chelsea in with £5million to fund the construction of a new North Stand, and also lent the club more than twice that amount to purchase players. But there was no question of the younger man adopting the traditional boardroom values so beloved of Mr Bates. To the best of my knowledge I never saw Ken Bates wearing a Chelsea replica kit, or drinking with supporters in The Imperial public house on the Kings Road before a game. Who can forget Matthew turning up at the unveiling of Gianluca Vialli as a Blues player clutching a brand new home shirt already emblazoned with his name and number? "I'm just a fan who's done rather well," he once said, and the Chelsea massive took him to their hearts. Bates' priority was to build a futuristic stadium, Harding wanted a swashbuckling team to match the heroes of his youth. The two men were on a collision course which eventually resulted in Bates banning Harding from the directors' box, citing "behaviour related to your heavy drinking both home and away". The letter sent to Harding contained a P.S. which read: "Please ensure that your `Bates Out' banner in the Main Stand does not obscure the valuable advertisement panels". "Never mind," replied Matthew, "I'll go and sit in the North Stand. I presume that's alright with you. After all, I did pay for it." The ban galvanised popular support for Harding and by now a large majority of fans wanted him to take over. A well-known spokesman for the Chelsea Independent Supporters' Association crystalised opinion at the time saying, "Bates appears to think it is his club, while Harding's attitude is that it is our club." (The current market-leading Chelsea fanzine, cfcuk whose origins can be traced back to the CISA, originally came to life as Matthew Harding's Blue and White Army and to this very day it still carries the strap-line published in memory of Matthew Harding on every single page.) The bitter public feud rumbled on with Harding pledging that Chelsea fans would be given a vote in the future of the club if he won his power battle with Bates. "If I become chairman I intend to break some moulds, and one plan I have is to give club members the right to re-elect me as chairman. Chelsea have more than 25,000 members and they are the emotional shareholders of the club. I would go to them every summer and I'll promise you this now. If there was a majority voting against me I would stand down instantly." Harding's words stirred the True Blue soul … 'Matthew Harding's Blue and White Army', the chant would echo around the Bridge on match-days a testament to the faith supporters had in him. In December 1995, the club announced after a board meeting that the pair would lunch and sit together at the home Premiership match against Newcastle. That implied Bates had agreed to lift the ban on Harding taking his seat in the directors' box and using the boardroom facilities, though at the time both men refused to comment. By October 1996, Matthew Harding had committed £26.5 million to Chelsea Football Club and the irony was that both he and Bates were on the way to realising their own idealistic dreams. Had he lived, Matthew would have seen the Blues win the FA Cup at the end of the season and his journey to glory would have been complete. Saturday October 26th 1996 Chelsea are at home to arch-rivals Spurs. The game itself was destined to be a sideshow from the minute Ken Bates took the decision was taken not to postpone it and, as wakes go, it turned into quite a knees-up-mother-Brown party. Wreaths from both clubs were laid in the centre circle before the match, with a pint of Guinness for Harding standing on the centre spot; Dennis Wise and Steve Clarke, team captain and club captain respectively, carried out a floral message reading "Matthew RIP" and presented it in front of the newly-named Matthew Harding Stand. As the Chelsea players linked hands and stood, like the rest of us in the ground, waiting for referee Roger Dilkes to blow his whistle to signal the start of a minutes silence I wondered if this moment of reflection would be tarnished by ignorant morons as they usually were. Chelsea v Tottenham? It's never been a marriage made in heaven now has it? From the first second to the last, you could have heard a pin drop. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. That Chelsea fans stood silent was not unexpected, that Spurs fans followed suite only added to Matthew Harding's legend. Every supporter inside Stamford Bridge no matter what their allegiance recognised a part of themselves in Matthew … a supporter first and foremost … one of us. Matthew Harding's favourite expression was "Enjoy the game!" and boy would he have enjoyed this one. Chelsea took Spurs apart with a 3-1 victory, the goals coming from Ruud Gullit, David Lee and Roberto Di Matteo. "Everyone in the stadium today participated in a special way," Gullit said in his post-match interview, "including the Tottenham supporters, and on behalf of the team and the staff I want to thank them. Everybody's just happy about the way they played, and it was a perfect tribute to Matthew." Matthew Harding was only involved in the running of Chelsea Football Club for three years or so which makes it all the more remarkable that he could have made such an impression on Blues fans in such a short space of time. That he did is a testimony to the man and his principals. Chelsea supporter first and foremost, businessman second … a true man of the people, born on the Shed. Matthew Charles Harding … born Haywards Heath, Sussex 26 December 1953 …Vice-Chairman, Chelsea Football Club 1995- 96 … died 22 October 1996 … we salute you.

The media are just making up storys as they cant link a load of players to us to sell their papers... what makes the article a joke is that it says spurs are keeping an eye on it... anyone who reads cfcuk and understands JC would know he has stated he hates tottenham as much as the fans do and he does not ever want to play elsewhere he is as he has put in the past living his dream from the terraces at SB to winning the league playing for us doesnt get much better than that

PM me your mobile no nearer the time and ill text you and meet in the ground either before or half time depending on what timei make it into the ground

The way i see it is that you are either a fan or a supporter, to be a supporter you have to support the team e.g be in the crowd shouting the boys on each week. You can be a true fan from anywhere around the world and still have the passion... but i dont know how you manage it god it would drive me mad ( i know im spoilt by the amount of games i can attend this is on a below average salary but i sacrifice other things for chels i hate watching the chels on the tele as well i just cant enjoy it ) the international breaks are bad enough as for me watching Chelsea is more than the football its the feeling of being part of something in a crowd freezing your arse of at some northern hell hole in the middle of jan. What is also special about following Chelsea up and down the country is in modern society where people are judged by so many, no one cares who you are what you do etc etc you are part of something and always accepted for being chels end up chatting to people who normally you would never talk to in every day life

The two stands with the best crowd are the matthew harding lower and the shed end(upper or lower), to get a good crowd and a good view id go for the shed upper

My train gets in to new street at 10 am you wouldnt want to make your way from the ground to the center of town a 10-15 min train ride if your not getting there till half 11 would risk missing kick off and thats the last thing you want to do..im sitting in block 2 row R i think