Chelsea and Arsenal met in the Football League First Division at Stamford Bridge for the first time on 9 November 1907, 30 years after the stadium was first opened for the use of the London Athletic Club. Chelsea won 1-2 with both goals scored by George Hilsdon. Arsenal’s response came from Charlie Satterthwaite.

George Hilsdon was the first player to score 100 goals for Chelsea and a weather vane inspired by him can still be seen at Stamford Bridge. Legend has it that Chelsea will suffer a “great misfortune” if it is ever removed, as was the case during foundation works in the late 1970s when Chelsea were in financial and footballing decline. Hilsdon was the victim of a gas attack on the Western Front in World War I and never played professional football again, dying in 1941. His grave is unmarked.

This first match was watched by a record crowd for England’s top division: 65,000. Arsenal were still known as Woolwich Arsenal and were based at the time, but had a large following for this match due to it also being King Edward VII’s 66th birthday. The munitions factory, where many of the workers who followed the club were based, was closed for the day, so they were free to travel west to London.

In fact, Arsenal might have been more of a local rival to Chelsea than Tottenham Hotspur. A local businessman, Henry Norris, had an important role in the development of both clubs. Amassing a fortune from the estate, Norris became manager and then chairman of Fulham. Another Edwardian businessman named Henry, Henry Augustus Mears, had acquired Stamford Bridge with a view to making it one of the best venues for association football in the capital, if not the whole country. He offered Norris the chance to move Fulham FC to the land, but Norris refused to pay the annual rent of some £1500, so Mears created his own team, Chelsea FC, in 1905. Had Norris not been so careful with his money, it might have not been a Chelsea football club at all.

Five years later, Norris, still chairman of Fulham, became a majority shareholder in Woolwich Arsenal, which had gone into voluntary liquidation. Also becoming president of that London club, Norris proposed to merge them with Fulham to form a superclub. The move was blocked by the Football League, so Chelsea and Fulham remained local rivals instead of Chelsea and Arsenal.

This match between the two teams in 1907 was the first to be played by two London clubs in the First Division, and thus the first major “London derby”. All subsequent league meetings between the two teams to date have been at the top level of English football (the former First Division and now the Premier League).

Woolwich Arsenal got their revenge the following season with a 2.1 win on 28 November 1908: Chelsea’s goal again came from George Hilsdon. The Gunners also won on Chelsea’s grass in the subsequent season, before the first draw, 1.1, in this league game on 15 February 1913. This was the last time the two teams met before Woolwich Arsenal met. moved to Highbury and changed its name. to Arsenal.

In fact, after that victory in their first meeting, Chelsea did not win the game again until December 13, 1919 when they won 3.1 on goals from Robert McNeil, John Cock and Henry Ford in front of a huge crowd of 60,000 at the postwar period.

The match on October 12, 1935 was played in front of another huge crowd – 82,905, which was the second-highest attendance on record for an English league match. It ended in a 1.1 draw. Joseph Bambrick scored for Chelsea and Jack Crayston for Arsenal.

Arsenal’s record league victory at Stamford Bridge came in front of 74,667 football fans on 29 November 1930 – a 5.1 win, with David Jack scoring a hat-trick as Arsenal closed in on their maiden win in the league championship and dominated English football in the 1930s. They scored five times again on 24 November 1934, in a 5.2 win this time, with legendary Arsenal centre-forward Ted Drake scoring four of Arsenal’s goals. Drake would go on to manage Chelsea in 1952 and was largely responsible for changing his nickname from pensioners to The Blues.

The Gunners also scored five goals in a 5.3 win on 29 October 2011 with Robin Van Persie scoring a hat-trick for the victors.

Chelsea’s biggest game win came in a 6.0 Premier League win on 22 March 2014, which was also Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger’s 1,000th game in charge. This is the most goals Chelsea have scored against Arsenal in a league match at Stamford Bridge and also represented The Blues’ largest margin of victory. Oscar scored twice that day along with one from Samuel Eto’o, Andre Schurrle, Eden Hazard and Mohamed Salah in front of an attendance of 41,614.

The teams are head to head in terms of wins in this match. In Chelsea’s league title-winning years, they have never lost at home to their north London rivals, drawing games in the 1954/55 and 2004/05 seasons and winning each in 2005/06, 2009 ./10 and 2014/15.

Arsenal, in the 13 seasons in which they have finished as League Champions, have only lost to Chelsea twice (Chelsea were in the Second Division in the 1988/89 season, so there was no match) – on August 1970 when Paddy Mulligan and John Hollins scored for Chelsea and Eddie Kelly returned one for Arsenal, and February 2, 1991. Kerry Dixon and Graham Stuart scored for Chelsea that day with Alan Smith answering for Arsenal in front of a crowd of 29,094 . This was the only league defeat of the season for George Graham’s Arsenal and the first in 27 First Division games, dating back to a 2.0 defeat at Luton Town on 21 April 1990.