It’s the end of the 1993-94 Premiership season and West Ham have just finished 13th whilst Chelsea have finished 14th. The Hammers are without a major trophy since 1980 whilst the Blues’ barren spell goes back even further; they are without a significant honour to their name since winning the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1971. Their respective honours stand up relatively equal to each other if you take into account the popular use of applying points to each significant piece of silverware a club has won; 10 points for winning a League Championship, 10 for a major European trophy excluding the European Cup/Champions League which is equal to 15 points, 6 for an FA Cup win, and 3 for a League Cup triumph. From this point of view West Ham are on 28 points whilst Chelsea are on 26.
Looking back at this time it seems hard to believe now, but it was not until Matthew Harding ploughed his millions into Chelsea in 1994 that they actually showed signs of improving. They reached the final of the FA Cup in 1994 and the semi-finals of the Cup Winners’ Cup in ’95, but even then they were still finishing in the bottom half of the table. And in the years before these mini-triumphs, they were the epitome of mediocrity – no major trophies won since 1971 and apart from a fifth place finish in 1990 they spent much of their time in the lower reaches of the top-flight – occupying five of their ten seasons in the 1980’s stuck in the old Second Division.
In 1982, whilst in the second tier of English football, Ken Bates bought the club for £1 thus inheriting and taking responsibility for the club’s debts of £1.5 million. This was not a club that were exactly ‘going places’, but a combination of level-headedness, in not getting ahead of themselves expecting quick-fire success, and a tightening of the purse strings meant that the club’s off-the-field matters were stabilised giving them the potential to gradually grow into the force that they are today.
It took a couple of years for Harding’s revolution to take shape. You could say the ball that is still rolling started in the summer of 1995 when, under Glenn Hoddle as manager, they acquired the services of former European footballer of the year Ruud Gullit; a winner of numerous domestic and continental honours for club and country and although they managed to finish in a meagre 11th place at the end of the 1995-96 season (one position behind West Ham which, incidentally, was the last time to date that the Hammers have finished above their west London rivals) the signing of Gullit was a sign of things to come.