Chelsea vs West Ham United Timeline & H2H Stats

There are definitely other London derbies with more anger and vitriol involved in them than the one between Chelsea and West Ham United, but let’s not suggest that that means that this one has always been sunshine and lollipops. That is in spite of the fact that the sides played out a dour 0-0 draw when they met each other for the first time on the 20th October, 1923 in the First Division. Although the two sides have often met in various cup competitions, they didn’t have to face one another in a final when they were going through their most successful periods, largely because those periods didn’t coincide with one another.

The first two FA Cup meetings that Chelsea and West Ham enjoyed ended in exactly the same scoreline, with the Blues running out 3-1 winners away from home in 1931 and then 3-1 winners at Stamford Bridge the following year. There was also a 3-1 win for the Hammers in the First Division in the middle of that, just to show that they weren’t just pushovers. In the 1945-1946 FA Cup, West Ham battered Arsenal 6-1 on aggregate, but then lost 2-1 to the Blues in the fourth round before being knocked out by Aston Villa. That back and forth has often been how things have worked out between the two sides, with little in between.

Chelsea Dominant in the Later Years

A list of results between Chelsea and West Ham United will show you two teams happy to go at one another and seemingly win games at random. Between the January of 1931 and the same month in 1946, for example, the Blues won five times, with West Ham picking up one win. From the September of 1959 through to the November of 1965, meanwhile, the Hammers won eight times and Chelsea only won twice, picking up two draws along the way. In other words, for a long period of time this was a game in which there was no clear dominant side, with each time looking just as likely to take home the win as the other.

Once Roman Abramovich arrived at Stamford Bridge and began to pump billions into the club, however, things changed. The riches allowed Chelsea to dominate pretty much every team in the country, with West Ham being just as likely to fall foul of the new regime as anyone else. Having lost in the September of 2002 and the May of 2003, the Blues then won 11 times, with West Ham only able to emerge from the matchup with two draws during that period. The balance of power had shifted. In the years that followed the Hammers were able to wrestle back a bit of control, but Chelsea were the new dominant force in town.

Chelsea’s Full Match History Against West Ham United