Long before Chelsea became the powerhouse of world football, they were perennial strugglers, both on the pitch and at the bank.
When I first started following them, they had a self-imposed freeze on buying new players. They were that broke.
While things are a lot brighter for the club now, and they have had so much success and won so many trophies, there is one memory of the old days I will never forget: the cars parked behind the goal on one end of the old Stamford Bridge.
I never found out who those cars belonged to. Was it players, coaches, big-shot Chelsea fans? No one seems to know.