Chelsea’s poor start to the new era under Mauricio Pochettino received a slight boost with their impressive wins over Brighton and Fulham recently. The back-to-back wins appear to have given more life to their passionate match-going fans, who have finally found their voice this season.
Over the course of 2023, Chelsea fans have been relatively quiet in both home and social media. There were barely any videos of match going fans engaging in chants due to the lack of wins.
Though, it has to be said that Chelsea fans have a poor reputation when it comes to creativity in their chants.
In most cases, the banal ‘Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea’ chant be heard ringing around Stamford Bridge at home ground. Their match-going fans aren’t the smartest when it comes to creating chants, which is an essential part of fan culture in England. To make things worse, one of the ‘unique’ chants they tried developing in the past has only come back to haunt them.
Indeed, Chelsea developed a shocking chant a few decades ago, one that makes no sense and has no place in football in the 21st century either. We’re talking about the infamous ‘Chelsea Ranger’ chant.
This is not your regular chant either, but something similar to a military cadence. It’s actually a ‘call and response song’ where the lyrics are normally sung by a ‘leader’ and then repeated by a bunch of other people.
The lyrics to the chant, although, are rather embarrassing and downright diabolical for a fan chant. This is how the Chelsea Ranger chant goes by, for those who want to know.
I wanna be a Chelsea Ranger,
I wanna live a life of danger,
I wanna beat Spurs every week,
Chase ’em up and down the street,
Here’s to the girl that I love best,
Every night I suck her breasts,
Sh*g her standing, Sh*g her lying,
If she had wings,
I’d sh*g her flying,
Now she’s dead.
Not forgotten,
Dig her up,
Sh*g her rotten.
Oooooooooh, Chelsea…
This chant is extremely wrong on so many levels and only the most clueless supporter would ever indulge in singing onto these lyrics. For one, the chant is extremely sexist and possibly offensive to a lot of female fans because of how they’re being objectified in it.
Moreover, it only gets worse as the lyrics progress. After a point, the chant basically sees the ‘leader’ talking about straight-up necrophilia – which is engaging in sexual activity with the corpse of a deceased person.
While the first few lines of the chant are still fine, it gets absolutely vile as it moves on and there should be no place for an offensive chant like this in games. This is also why you probably don’t get to hear it much in matches, but the fact that some fans decided to blare it out in public earlier this year shows the sad state of affairs among a part of the football fanbase.
Of course, most fans are absolutely disgusted by the Chelsea Ranger chant and have hit out at those Chelsea fans who willingly sing it as well. This chant, of course, isn’t a recent one and has been sung by the Chelsea faithful for over 20 years – but has clearly become rare due to its shameful lyrics.
Most fans are shocked by how the fans go sideways after the few lyrics and have slammed it for having no place whatsoever in modern football. Chelsea fans are actually being encouraged to stick to their ‘Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea..’ chant because of it at least being a rather safe and non-offensive one.
The club, of course, are unlikely to tolerate this kind of chant in their stadium and encourage their fans to never sing it to games. Most fans are probably logical enough to never do so, but the fact that some still sing it shows the dismal state of affairs among one section of the supporter base.