page_title: History of Chelsea F.C.
section_title: Early years (1905–15)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Chelsea F.C. / Early years (1905–15)
context_page_description: C.
  Chelsea are one of England's most successful ever clubs having won 6 league titles, 8 FA Cups, 5 League Cups, 4 FA Charity/Community Shields, 1 UEFA Champions League, 2 UEFA Cup Winners' Cups, 2 UEFA Europa Leagues and 1 UEFA Super Cup.
context_section_description: Chelsea Football Club were founded on 10 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 Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea, was settled on after London FC, Kensington FC and Stamford Bridge FC had been rejected. Blue shirts were adopted by Mears, after the racing colors of Lord Chelsea, along with white shorts and dark blue socks.
  Chelsea initially considering joining the Southern League, but were rejected following objections from Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur, so they instead applied for admission to the Football League. Their candidacy was endorsed at the Football League AGM on 29 May 1905; a speech by Parker was particularly important, emphasising the new club's financial stability, its impressive new stadium and marquee players such as William "Fatty" Foulke, the 22 stone goalkeeper who had won a league title and two FA Cups with Sheffield United.
  Twenty-eight-year-old Scottish international half-back John Robertson was hired as player-manager. The club began with established players recruited from other teams; along with Foulke, Chelsea signed forwards Jimmy Windridge and Bob McRoberts from Small Heath, and Frank Pearson from Manchester City. Chelsea's first league match took place away at Stockport County on 2 September 1905. They lost the game 1–0. Their first home match was against Liverpool in a friendly. They won 4–0. Robertson also scored Chelsea's first competitive goal, coming in a 1–0 win against Blackpool.
  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 1905, and by January 1907 he had left for Glossop. 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.
  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 19th in 1914–15, the final competitive season before football in England was suspended owing to World War I. The club would normally have been relegated, but when regular football resumed in 1919 the league was expanded to 22 teams and Chelsea were re-elected to the First Division.
  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.
  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 half-back Ben Warren and striker Bob Whittingham. The club had the highest average attendance in English football in 1907–08, 1909–10, 1911–12, 1912–13 and 1913–14. A crowd of 67,000 attended a league game against Manchester United on Good Friday 1906, a then-record for a football match in London. 55,000 attended
caption: Chelsea beat West Brom at Stamford Bridge in September 1905.
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