The further back you go into Chelsea’s history, the less likely it is that modern day football fans are going to have heard about the players that we’re looking at. Unless they went on to do something outside of playing for Chelsea, such as how Terry Venables became the England manager later in his career, it is likely that most players will be lost to the annals of time. In the case of Derek Saunders, he was a player that might have been called a prodigy if he’d have played in the modern era, but instead he has to make do with being something of a footnote in the long and illustrious history of Chelsea Football Club.
Derek Saunders’ Honours as a Chelsea Player
| Season | League Titles | Domestic Cups | European/International Cups |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1954-1955 | First Division | – | – |
Who Was Derek Saunders?
Derek William Saunders was born on the sixth of January 1928 in the Hertfordshire town of Ware. There was a local team in Ware who played in the Spartan League, so Saunders joined up with them in 1945 as a 17-year-old. He became the club’s youngest ever captain, playing in numerous positions across 31 appearances during that season. Eventually he settled into playing as a wing-half, as the position was known back then, earning a move to the amateur side Walthamstow Avenue. He was again made the club captain, leading the side out as it won the FA Amateur Cup final in 1952 and catching the eye of a London club.
Moving to Chelsea
Saunders made the move to Stamford Bridge in the June of 1953, turning professional immediately. His debut for the Blues came against Sheffield United in a match that the London club lost 2-1. That was, perhaps, a sign of the work that needed to be done to get Chelsea back into the big time, which was reinforced by the fact that the club lost five of the next seven games that Saunders played in. The only shining light is that one of the matches that the Blues didn’t lose was a victory of London rivals Arsenal at Highbury. Saunders started 33 games for Chelsea in the 1953-1954 season, winning 13 of them.
What was to follow, however, was one of the best season’s in the formative years of Chelsea’s existence. Chelsea would go on to win the league at the end of the 1954-1955 campaign, with Saunders being one of just two players who played in every single game. He was a player who rarely got on the scoresheet, which is what made the goal that he scored against West Bromwich Albion on the ninth of March 1955 all the more special. Having trailed 2-0, Chelsea got back into the game and made it 2-2 before Saunders popped up with the goal to make it 3-2. The Blues went on to 4-2 against the Baggies, which would prove crucial.
The win against West Brom came on the back of a loss to Aston Villa, but it set the Blues up perfectly for the following few weeks. Draws against Blackpool, Sheffield United and Portsmouth were the only blots on Chelsea’s copybook as the London club went on a run that included seven wins in ten games. Even a 3-1 loss to Manchester United at the end of the season wasn’t enough to stop Chelsea from winning the First Division, ending up with 52 points compared to the 48 points achieved by Wolverhampton Wanderers in second. It was the first time that Chelsea had won the top-flight title and Saunders had been a vital cog in the Stamford Bridge machine.
Becoming Captain
It is fair to say that Chelsea’s defence of their title got off to something of an inauspicious start. The 1955-1956 season began with a defeat to Bolton Wanderers and was quickly followed up a solitary win amongst two draws and three defeats. Other than a run of four wins in succession, the Blues struggled to have any sort of consistency during the campaign and five defeats in a row between then end of February and the start of April saw them finish in 16th place, 21 points behind the eventual winners of the title, Manchester United. There was a slight improvement in the following season, but more on a personal front for Saunders.
He began to find his shooting boots during the 1956-1957 campaign, finding the back of the net five times. That included during a 5-1 thrashing of Everton at Goodison Park that was one of the highest scoring games of the season and was immediately followed up with a 6-2 win over Newcastle United. In spite of the Blues scoring for fun for a few games a 1-0 loss to Preston North End consigned them to a 13th place finish in the First Division, having slipped to 25 points shy of the Manchester United side that won the title. A change was needed for the Blues and a decision was taken to give Saunders the captain’s armband.
Captain for Two Seasons
Saunders’ first match as Chelsea captain was a London derby against Tottenham Hotspur, with the Blues departing White Hart Lane with a point. It was a season of mixed results for the Stamford Bridge side, punctuated by a 5-1 win over Birmingham City and a 4-0 defeat of Leicester City as well as a 7-4 win against Portsmouth, but there was no real sense that Chelsea were going to do anything other than remain resolutely mid-table. A brief run in the FA Cup offered some hope for silverware, but that was brought to a halt thanks to a 4-1 loss away to Darlington. Saunders was captain of a ship that wasn’t really sailing anywhere.
That being said, they did quite literally end up going somewhere during the 1958-1959 season. Chelsea had been selected for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, going as a team in order to represent the city of London. This meant that Saunders not only played in but was also captain for Chelsea in the club’s first ever foray into European competition, having represented the London XI the year before. ‘Who was Chelsea’s first ever captain in a European game?’ feels like the final question that you might get asked on something like Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, so you might want to make a mental note of the answer.
Leaving Chelsea
Although Saunders had had the honour of leading the Blues out in European competition, helping them defeat a Copenhagen XI 7-2 on aggregate, defeat to a Belgrade XI drew the adventure to a close in the competition that Barcelona would go on to win for the second time by defeating Birmingham City in the final in 1960. In the First Division, it would be another season of little success for Chelsea, who ended the campaign in 14th with 40 points, 21 off the top. It was also one in which Saunders’ time as a player finally drew to a close, seeing things out with a 3-1 to Aston Villa in the FA Cup in the January of 1959.
He immediately joined the Chelsea coaching staff, but soon realised that coaching at that level wasn’t really for him. Instead, he became a PE teacher and also took on the responsibility of being the groundsman at Westminster School. Someone who obviously cared about his job, his work was noticed by Hampstead Cricket Club and he was given the job as groundsman there. Eventually he made the decision to retire altogether, heading to Frinton-on-Sea in Essex to see out his final days. He died on the third of March 2018 at the age of 90, forgotten by many but an important part of Chelsea Football Club’s long and illustrious history.