BEES, BATES AND JOSE

As I write, on April 2nd, Chelsea has suffered a "devastating" Premier League defeat to neighbouring Brentford FC. The Bees came from 0-1 down at Stamford Bridge, to win 1-4. The great news is that Christian Eriksen topped his recovery from "near death", to score the third and contribute to Chelsea's first defeat to The Bees since February 1939, (1-3 in the Div 1 Football League). Since their first meeting in 1935, Chelsea has won 10 times, drawn 2 and lost 5 times in history. Previously in this season's PL, Chelsea won 0-1.(There was also a 0-2 win in the League Cup in December).

On this day in 1982, Ken Bates bought heavily-in-debt Chelsea…for £1. With somebody that Chelsea knows well, José Mourinho and Bates certainly seemed to keep the home fans happy for a while. Jose did move on of course. On April 2nd 2011, Jose's 150 game unbeaten home league record, as a manager, ended when his Real Madrid side were beaten 1-0 by Sporting Gijón in the Primera Liga at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.  Jose's previous home defeat, which was his only other home league defeat as a manager (at the time), had taken place on 23rd February 2002, when his 9-man Porto side were beaten 3-2 by Beira-Mar in the Portuguese League. 

Over the next 9 years Mourinho's sides were unbeaten in 150 home League matches on the trot - those matches comprised his last 38 matches at Porto (36 wins, 2 draws), all 60 in his first spell at Chelsea (46 wins, 14 draws), all 38 matches at Inter Milan (29 wins, 9 draws) and his first 14 home matches at Real Madrid (all 14 were wins). 

When he returned to Chelsea in 2013, for his second spell as boss, the Special One saw the Chelsea part of the unbeaten home Premier League record increase from 60 matches to 77 (61 won, 16 drawn) until lowly Sunderland recorded a 2-1 victory at Stamford Bridge on 19th April 2014. This loss was one of 13 that season, the others were in non PL matches or away PL games.

Way out in front and ruining the game for everybody was Chelsea's remarkable run of 86 league games at Stamford Bridge without defeat from March 20th, 2004 to October 26th, 2008. The only thing surprising about the four-year run, is it only spawned two league titles, back-to-back in 2005 and 2006, but it was a period that really established them as the new challengers to United's dominance as Arsenal also began to falter. Again, it was Liverpool who mercifully brought that League run to an end with a 1-0 win. There were defeats in FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA games though.