Matthew Harding – the city dealer who turned the tide for Chelsea

Twenty-five years ago tonight a helicopter crashed into a field outside Middlewich in Cheshire on the way back from a League Cup match between Bolton Wanderers and Chelsea. All five passengers died. One of them was a young socialist millionaire who kickstarted the modern era of success at Stamford Bridge. Allan Prosser recalls the story of Matthew Harding

GONE TOO SOON: The tragic loss of Matthew Harding 25 years ago tonight cast a dark pall over Stamford Bridge. Picture: Ben Radford/Allsport

Before Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour; before Stan Kroenke and the Glazers and Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha. Before Angela Staveley and Mohammed bin Salman, a businessman emerged at a slumbering club which he had followed from the terraces since he was nine.

On his watch Chelsea invested in new players such as Dan Petrescu, Ruud Gullit and Mark Hughes; Glen Hoddle was backed as player-coach only to be prematurely tempted away by England, an error of judgement from which his managerial career never recovered; work started on an extensive modernisation of the ground.