Chelsea's loathing for their crosstown rivals is so strong some fans use their 55-year-old walk-on anthem as a vessel for bashing, regardless of the fixture
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Liquidator is a 1969 reggae track with Hammond organ crescendos so rousing that the Jamaican record producer Harry J figured no vocals were necessary. Clearly, that is not an opinion shared by the thousands at Stamford Bridge who have taken to weaponising the instrumental chorus with their own lyrics.
‘We hate Tottenham! Chelsea!’ Hatred for them, love for us, in that order before each and every game, whoever the opponent. Not all Chelsea fans are fond of their 55-year-old walk-on anthem being used as a vessel for bashing, insisting you can loathe that lot without spoiling our song, but it serves as a regular reminder of this rivalry’s standing.
The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium DJ will not encourage Chelsea's away end by throwing Liquidator into Sunday's pre-match playlist, no petrol needed on this fire after a history so venomously colourful it involves meat hooks and electrified fencing as well as the odd classic scoreline.
In search of its origins, before there was even a flicker of a feud, Mail Sport was told to look back to the 1967 FA Cup final – or the ‘Cockney Cup final’ as it was christened as the first all-London affair. Two of Chelsea’s own in Jimmy Greaves and Terry Venables starred for their victorious opponents. Tottenham had been winning trophies when they weren’t. Bitterness was brewing, so say the historians.
We phoned John Boyle for verification. He’s 77 years young today, but was 20 when he started for Chelsea that day in front of 100,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. Surprisingly, he said there was no ill will. ‘I don’t think there was,’ Boyle told us. ‘I never saw any trouble. It started after that. Tottenham, Arsenal, West Ham, all the London teams, I don’t know if there was a big difference at the time. I never thought there was a rivalry with Spurs back then.’
The columnists concurred as Wembley was a serene scene, with the former Daily Express sportswriter Desmond Hackett commenting on his dispatch: ‘I enthused that this would be a joyous, knees-up, knocked-'em-in-the-Old-King's-Road affair. Unhappily, Tottenham's 2-1 win over Chelsea was as sedate as a tea party at Buckingham Palace, apart from the lamentable fact that the Queen did not attend.’ However, Boyle did add: ‘Although the ’67 final was hard to take for the fans.’
That frustration may be why the next time they met, in the First Division at White Hart Lane in November 1967, dozens were arrested during crowd disturbances. One chap was nicked for hiding a meat hook, another for concealing a sandbag, a third for carrying a metal cosh.
Similar stories cropped up from then on as English football entered an early era of hooliganism. March 1969, a 1-0 win for Tottenham with Notting Hill Gate and Earls Court among the London underground stations trashed by supporters who also slashed seats on carriages. October 1972, a 1-0 victory for Chelsea in which troublemakers tossed fireworks at one another from the terraces.
Boyle suggested we look further forward, to once he had left Chelsea in 1973. Inevitably that took us to April 1975, a game in which both sides knew their First Divisions statuses depended as the newspapers said the losers would take a walk down ‘death row’. Eddie McCreadie was only two days into the job as Blues boss when he selected an 18-year-old called Ray Wilkins as captain, axing a legend in John Hollins.
The atmosphere at White Hart Lane was animalistic. Kick-off was delayed as supporters spilled on to the pitch in scraps. Pat Jennings was kicked in the shin by one intruder, but the Tottenham goalkeeper gave his assailant a booting back and the young fan limped away feeling like he had received the goal-kick treatment.
While Chelsea’s current ownership hope their faith in youth is rewarded on Sunday, McCreadie was not. His team lost 2-0. Tottenham survived on 34 points. Chelsea dropped down to the Second Division on 33. Even younger than Wilkins that day was Teddy Maybank, handed his Chelsea debut at the age of 18. Today he is 68, and Mail Sport’s next phone call after Boyle.
‘It was tremendously violent,’ Maybank told us. ‘When we got there, it was like something out of a different world, horrendous. It was lethal, not a nice place to be. In the dressing room, we heard it all kicking off and we didn’t even want to go out to have a look.’
Boyle had to pop out to hand his parents their tickets. Thankfully as a teenage debutant, he could ghost through the war zone without being recognised. ‘It was the scariest moment of my life,’ he continued. ‘You’ll always remember it. Always. It sticks with you, the aggression. Whoever lost that game was relegated. The tension was ridiculous. It’s a shame I didn’t have enough experience to go out and play with a free head.’
And yet, Boyle added he would go through it all over again, because this is the game you live for. Arsenal, Fulham, Crystal Palace, West Ham, Brentford, they’re all closer to Chelsea in SW6 than Tottenham in N17. But it means more than mere geography. Safe to say, then, the rivalry was alive and, certainly in Jennings’ case, kicking in 1975? ‘Definitely,’ Boyle said. ‘Without a doubt. For them to send us down, that hurt, really hurt.’
There are too many memorable matches to mention between then and now, plus a forest full of paperwork filed by coppers patrolling Fulham Road and that mile-long march to Seven Sisters, with the National Front infiltration into Chelsea's fanbase adding to the aggro.
In April 1985, a 12ft-high anti-hooligan electrified fence was erected at Stamford Bridge before the visit of Tottenham, though Greater London Council banned the barbed pitch perimeter from zapping anyone tempted to try to invade. Another story from New Year’s Day in 1986 goes that a few Chelsea fans’ knuckles were still too clean for their liking when their morning match with West Ham at Upton Park was postponed because of a frozen pitch, so they travelled to Highbury instead to liven up Tottenham’s goalless draw at Arsenal.
There was Chelsea’s 6-1 Premier League win at White Hart Lane in December 1997 in which Tore Andre Flo scored a hat-trick. Dennis Wise featured that day and word is he would take it upon himself to teach foreign imports the importance of winning these derbies.
There was Tottenham’s 5-1 League Cup semi-final second-leg victory at the same venue in January 2002, completing a turnaround after the first leg was marred by missile throwing, including coins aimed at Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
It was in the same competition in February 2008 that Spurs secured their last trophy, Chelsea’s cabinet since crammed via the wallet of Roman Abramovich, who might have opted to buy their rivals were it not for Sven-Goran Eriksson advising him to choose blue over white. Abramovich became attuned to the animosity, Carlton Cole claiming his transfer was cancelled when the Russian informed him: ‘You can’t go to Spurs, I don’t do business with them.’
The Battle of the Bridge came in May 2016, a 2-2 draw which confirmed Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester as 5,000-1 champions. Mark Clattenburg told Mail Sport that was ‘by far the hardest match I have ever refereed’, adding: ‘There was so much at stake and you could sense the tension. There would have been few complaints if I had sent off four players that night but equally I could have been accused of ruining what was a great game. I don't think I could have won.’
There was Tottenham's 3-1 Premier League win in April 2018, their first at Stamford Bridge in 28 years after being the gift that kept on giving for too long. Then Chelsea’s 4-1 victory last season when Ange Postecoglou’s high line acted as a noose around the team’s neck, beautifully bonkers though it was for neutrals. Not even that scoreline earned Mauricio Pochettino forgiveness from the Chelsea fans who hated the Tottenham blood in his veins.
You need to be special to be universally loved, and Greaves was that, a scorer of 132 goals in 169 games for Chelsea and 266 in 379 for Tottenham.
Some years ago, Stamford Bridge officials added one of his quotes to a wall in the home dressing room, reading: ‘It’s probably the greatest name in the world: Chelsea. You think about it. It conjures up the best part of the biggest city in the world.’ He was adored, Greavsie, with the two teams’ supporters setting aside their hatred before their meeting in September 2021 to mark his passing at the age of 81. Among those present to pay tribute were Micky Hazard, Graham Roberts and Glenn Hoddle, three men who also represented these two rivals.
And now for the next instalment. Tottenham may remind us how their true enemies are Arsenal. Some at Chelsea may claim they find Liverpool more loathsome, and certainly the away end in Southampton on Wednesday went through their full repertoire of songs reserved for their Scouse foes.
But there will be no love lost on Sunday. Not before, not during, not after. History, and the lyrics inserted into Liquidator, tells us so.