Our ‘On This Day’ feature today looks at Chelsea’s programme from the 1970/71 season. Read our review of the issue below and click here to see all the top-flight issues from that season.
Chelsea’s programme remained largely unchanged from the previous season’s issue, being a 20-page B6-size production. The 1970/71 season issue featured a little more advertising content than had been the case with the previous year’s edition, although there were still 18 pages of content for the one-shilling cost.
There were a few readable features in the programme. ‘The Talk of Stamford Bridge’ was spread over a page and a half, with the column featuring updates from around the club. For the visit of Manchester United, the column included preparations for the club’s trip to Bruges in the quarter-final of the European Cup Winners Cup, (which Chelsea would win just a few months later). ‘Between Ourselves’ was a column from Programme Editor Albert Sewell, who in this edition discussed the merits of football taking a winter break.
‘Visitors’ View’ introduced Chelsea’s match-day opponents. For the visit of Manchester United, the focus of the article was on the return to the position of manager of Sir Matt Busby, who had taken back the reins of the club following the sacking of Wilf McGuinness. The feature also displayed the club’s results for the seasons to date across the various competitions. There were also two opposition pages further on within the programme, the first of which showed a team group picture, whilst the second focused on previous meetings between the two sides earlier in the season, along with pen-pics of the visiting players.
In terms of other content, the line-ups for the day’s fixture were included on the inside front cover, while there was photographic coverage of a previous match across the centre pages, ‘In Off the Post’ was a letters page for supporters, while ‘Chelsea Gallery’ displayed a picture of one Blues first-team player. A page of ‘Tables, Appearances, and Goalscorers’ then provided information for Chelsea’s first-team, reserves, and youth side, whilst there were separate pages for the results and fixtures for all three teams. Recent results were expanded on in more detail in ‘Match Summaries’, which included line-ups, scorer details, and a brief write-up for first team matches.
This Chelsea issue maintained the same impressive standard that had been established through the 1960s. With a low proportion of advertising content and several readable articles, the Blues issue remained one of the best ‘value for money’ issues in Division One.