Eddie Newton takes us back down memory lane!

chelsea daftAug 16, 2010

""I have washed down every seat of the top tier of the East stand. I joined the club at 13 and we would train in the morning — on gravel in Battersea Park or in the car park behind Stamford Bridge — and do chores in the afternoon. I’ve pulled out the weeds in the away end and painted yellow markers on the old terracing steps. I collected dirty kit and bagged up the clean one. We cleaned boots and dressing rooms — we were fully paid-up skivvies. It’s difficult to recognise the club now from what I wandered into.

Everyone thinks that Ruud Gullit was the catalyst for change, But it was Glenn Hoddle. He turned Chelsea into a forwardthinking, winning football club. He had to educate the players, the coaching staff and everyone else behind the scenes. And the fans. They were used to 4-4-2, highoctane, “get-it-in-the-box-quickly” type of football. He didn’t want that. He played 3-5-2. I don’t think anyone had played that system before. I certainly hadn’t. He asked me to be a “holding midfielder” — I didn’t have a clue what he was banging on about.

We ended up getting booed for the first dozen games. The boys in the Shed weren’t happy. “Get it forward,” they’d yell, “what are you lot doing?”. I can still hear the jeers ringing in my ears. And Glenn is on the side shouting: “Don’t launch it, don’t you dare launch it.” Then, we got a clap after a bit of possession. We started looking at each other: “Bloody hell, what’s happening here?”.

People started signing for us. Ruud Gullit walked through the door and my jaw dropped. At AC Milan it is five-star, 24-hour service. At Harlington, we had Heathrow on one side and the M4 on the other. Coaches would have to stop what they were saying while Concorde took off. So Ruud needed to adjust — on and off the pitch.

I remember one day we were playing QPR and Ian Holloway was ratting around the midfield — as he did. All of a sudden, a ball bounced up. Ruud went to chest it and Olly put his foot up, won the ball and almost took Rudi’s head off. My pal shouted at the ref: “Oi, he can’t do that” but play went on. Ruud was stood, frozen in the centre of the pitch. We were screaming at him: “Get back here, this is England, that’s allowed.” But Ruud was not having any of it. I had to have a word with him at half-time. I said: “You need to start looking after yourself.” He took it on board. He understood.

Rudi was the perfect man to follow Glenn,’ added Newton. ‘He made the dressing room feel good about itself. If we were playing Manchester United, Ruud Gullit didn’t care. And that transmitted itself to us.

He wasn’t massive on tactics. He would stand in front of us and say: “My belief is that we are the third best team in the country. The aim is to be the best. I believe, with one or two additions, we will be." Everyone just looked at each other. Some people, like Mark Hughes, were used to that mentality. Some of us weren’t. But we took it on board.

There were two camps, the domestic guys and the foreigners. Ruud managed to blend them together at a Christmas party. The foreigners wanted to go for a meal, which they were used to. The British lads wanted a jolly-up, go to a club — which they were used to.

So Ruud said: “OK, this is what we will do. All of us will go for a meal. Afterwards, all of us will go to a club. Everyone will have a drink. You are not standing there for 10 minutes and going home. You will stay.”

We all had a great time. We had banter about that night for ages. The feeling developed that it was us against the world. We knew everyone was painting us as big-time Charlies, flash this, flash that. The way we played our football. The club moved up a gear."