As our decade-by-decade look at Chelsea's 120-year history continues, it is time for the glamour and the glory of the Kings of the King's Road.
After the new generation of Blues had claimed their first silverware, in the form of the 1965 League Cup, European football beckoned. A glamourous and memorable Fairs Cup campaign saw us get past Italian giants Roma and AC Milan – winners of the European Cup three years earlier – before finally succumbing to Barcelona in a semi-final replay.
On the domestic front, we finally made it past the FA Cup semi-finals after falling at that stage in back-to-back seasons, only to fall short once again in the first all-London ‘cockney cup final’ against Tottenham Hotspur, in which Ron Harris became the youngest-ever player to captain a side in an FA Cup final.
A few months later, manager Tommy Docherty made way for Dave Sexton, and the latter’s more refined and calm demeanour initially proved the perfect match for a talented but often undisciplined team. The decades of taunts about Chelsea’s failure to win the FA Cup were finally ended in 1970, when an epic and infamous final against bitter rivals Leeds United was won in a replay at Old Trafford.
That was followed by another triumph over the mighty Real Madrid in the following season’s European Cup Winners Cup final to earn our first continental silverware to boot, but the good times were not here to stay.
After a disappointing defeat to Stoke City in the 1972 League Cup final, financial struggles surrounding the redevelopment of Stamford Bridge saw several of the players who had been central to our success sold, before Sexton departed and we were ultimately relegated in 1975.
Here are some of our favourite images from Chelsea's seventh decade...