The Premier League record that may never be broken: ‘I would be devastated if it was beaten in my lifetime’

“It was like having three levels of security,” former Chelsea captain John Terry explains to The Athletic with a contented smile. “If you were building a house, it was like having Claude Makelele at the front gate, Ricardo Carvalho and myself in the garden and Petr Cech at the door. You’re not going to get in, are you?”

Terry is taking great delight in reflecting on the 2004-05 season, when Chelsea set a Premier League record that is arguably tougher to beat than any other, conceding just 15 goals in 38 league games as they convincingly won the title.

Only the Preston North End team of 1888-89 have matched them in the history of England’s top division — but their 15 goals conceded came in a season consisting of only 22 fixtures.

Since Chelsea set the target, nobody has come close to matching it.

The best efforts came from Chelsea themselves the following season, Manchester United (2007-08) and Liverpool (2018-19), as they each conceded 22 in 38 league games. Even the much-vaunted defences Liverpool and Arsenal are playing with this season had already failed in their bid to set a better number by Christmas.

No wonder Terry regards it as one of his and Chelsea’s greatest accomplishments.

“It is right up there,” he says. “I see it in a similar way to how Frank Lampard looks at all the goals he scored for Chelsea, being the (club’s all-time) leading scorer (on 211 goals). He is very proud of that record and, as defenders, we pride ourselves on clean sheets and those games where you pick up three points because you made a last-ditch tackle, put your body on the line more than others and got your reward. I am very proud of it.”

Carvalho, bought from Porto for just under £20million ($26m) the previous summer, regularly played next to the homegrown Terry at centre-back that season. With this being the 20th anniversary of Chelsea’s remarkable feat, he, too, is looking back very fondly on what took place.

“No one has come near to what we did,” Carvalho, catching up with The Athletic after his day’s work as assistant manager with Portugal’s national team. “It’s a long time since we did it and we still have the record. I grew up in Portugal and to come to the Premier League was a big challenge. I grew up as a player and as a person at the club. My best years were at Chelsea.

“As a team, we were difficult to play against. We had very good players but we were compact. Opponents found it difficult to score and to play against us, that was our main strength.”

Remember, this was the Premier League era of Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and other attacking talents. Speaking to these two legendary centre-backs all these years later gives a better idea of how that Chelsea team could be so frugal at the back.

The best place to start is with Jose Mourinho’s methodology. He was new to the Premier League that season — he was appointed in June 2004, fresh off winning the Champions League with Porto a week earlier — but didn’t need any time to get his message across.

Mourinho’s preferred system was a 4-3-3, in which Makelele would protect the back four as a holding midfielder, while the two wingers would do a lot of tracking back whenever Chelsea were out of possession.

Chelsea started the campaign with seven clean sheets from their opening eight league games. Southampton striker James Beattie had the honour of being the first opponent to score against them, albeit in a 2-1 loss at Stamford Bridge in the fourth league match. Nicolas Anelka, who later joined Chelsea in 2008, got the only goal from the penalty spot for Manchester City in mid-October to inflict their only league defeat all season. Mourinho’s side let in more than one goal on just two occasions, in 2-2 draws at home against Bolton Wanderers in November and away to Arsenal the following month.

Terry, a graduate from Chelsea’s academy, broke through into the first team when Gianluca Vialli was manager (1998-2000) and established himself as a regular under his successor, Claudio Ranieri (2000-04). Few are better equipped than the former England international to talk about the impact Mourinho made.

“Mourinho made a big difference,” said Terry, speaking at the head office of DAZN about Chelsea and their involvement in the Club World Cup, which can be watched free of charge this summer via that broadcaster. “He would tell us every day that not conceding goals was big, huge.

“When we did a small-sided game at training, previously you would do a five-a-side and it would end up 5-4 or 5-2. We started doing games under Mourinho and they would end up being 0-0, 1-0. If it was 0-0 and you agreed to play on for another 10 minutes, there would still be no goal. It was like an art. People were throwing their bodies on the line, the level was always going up, and everyone was trying to impress the manager. He was driving those sessions, which were big.

“During matches themselves, he was always on us, nothing was ever good enough. Even if you came in at half-time and it was 0-0, he would find something to tell you off about. It would still happen if you were 3-0 up. You would come in thinking, ‘This was going to be a nice easy one’ and he would go absolutely mad at me, the other defenders or something. You’d be like, ‘F***ing hell, where has that come from?’. But what it did is, it just lifted everyone, made them realise it was never over.”

This approach did not surprise Carvalho, who had worked under Mourinho for the previous two seasons at Porto, during which they won five major domestic and European trophies, including that shock Champions League triumph.

Carvalho continues: “Yes, Jose deserves a lot of credit for it all. Maybe some people didn’t like the way we played the game, but when you keep getting results, you have to follow him, because he was right. I wanted to play more with the ball, but I was a defender and had to defend first.

“I would be told off if I went too far with the ball. I had a few problems with this, first with the coach… but I had to feel my way to play, otherwise, I could not be the same player. Yet I remember even John (Terry) would shout at me sometimes to stay back! In a team of clever, talented people, you had a role on the pitch. Everyone knew what they had to do. I would also start to know myself if I went a little too far.

“Did we get upset if we ever conceded a goal? It was more about what it meant for the result if we got a draw or a defeat. It was hard to live with, particularly with Mourinho, because he was difficult when that happened! He showed that it couldn’t carry on like that and you had to give a good answer in the next game. When you’re fighting for the title, you cannot lose or draw too many games.

“I remember Chelsea conceding twice against Arsenal (inside the first half-hour at Highbury) and he was really upset with that, but they were hard to play against. They played so straight to the striker and Thierry Henry, who got both of them, was very strong. We were not used to conceding two goals and one of them came from a quick free kick. It stayed in your mind afterwards for two or three days. But it sent a message that we had to be more focused.”

The arrival of multi-billionaire owner Roman Abramovich in the 2002-03 pre-season gave Chelsea the financial clout to sign better players — a group who would be regulars in that Mourinho side. Along with Carvalho, Cech and Makelele, Abramovich’s wealth also provided right-back Paulo Ferreira, wingers Damien Duff, Arjen Robben and Joe Cole, and striker Didier Drogba.

But some of the key components of that 2004-05 team were in place before Abramovich arrived — Terry and Lampard, but also defender William Gallas and forward Eidur Gudjohnsen.

Terry and Makelele defending against Spurs’ Jermain Defoe (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

Supporting the team’s core figures were talented squad players such as Tiago, Glen Johnson, Geremi, Wayne Bridge and Robert Huth.

Terry argues that with so much quality around, it was inevitable the standards would go up.

He continues: “Cech was a big part of that. When he joined (from French side Rennes for £7million in that summer of 2004) the lads couldn’t beat him in training, it was pretty impressive the way he was performing daily during sessions. It gave us a great foundation. He was very dominant in the air, plus he was comfortable with the ball at his feet.

“I look today and the number of teams that just invite pressure on their back four by trying to play out. We had a ’keeper who would take responsibility and say, ‘No, we are not doing that. Everyone push up’.

“Also, if Petr did ever put the ball down to look for me or Ricardo when I could detect someone like Henry was ready to press me, I would have the balls to say, ‘No. No chance!’. It was a case of, ‘Let’s squeeze up. We have a great target man in Didier Drogba. When we get higher up the pitch, then we play from there’.

“On the right of our defence, we had Paulo (at full-back) and (centre-back) Ricardo, who already had a great relationship from their time together at Porto. They had played together for a few years. And then there was myself and William Gallas, who had been playing together already and had a great understanding too.”

Terry laughs: “Between the four of us — other than Ricardo occasionally bombing forward — we all knew our jobs and our roles. It wasn’t to cross the halfway line. In terms of the modern-day full-back bombing forward or tucking inside, we had none of that. It was a very solid back four with an unbelievable holding midfielder, Makelele, in front of us and probably one of the best ’keepers we have ever seen behind us. In terms of the foundation, something to build on, I am not sure it got much better than that, to be honest.

“But we had a lot of firepower in the team too: Drogba, Lampard, Eidur, Cole, Duff and Robben. If we scored early, which we were more than capable of, we would sit back, keep possession, dominate the ball and frustrate the hell out of our opponents. You could sense many teams felt beaten once we went ahead.”

Many Chelsea supporters feel that centre-back partnership of Terry and Carvalho is the best the club have ever had. Carvalho’s arrival broke up another brilliant combination between Terry and Gallas, with Mourinho opting to use Gallas as a left-back instead.

“I still think about that,” Carvalho says. “Last time I saw William, we were talking about it  — how much I think of him as a centre-back in my head and how he loved playing there. But he told me, ‘Ricky, you are wrong. I enjoyed playing on the left side, because I liked going forward and could cut in on my right foot’.

“John and I had a connection on the pitch straight away. I didn’t speak the language well at first, but he was the right partner. I could play next to John with my eyes closed because I knew what he would do. You didn’t need to speak the same language, it was just a feeling we had.

Cech saving a shot against Everton (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

“He loved to go for the first ball and I tried to cover, to help him. He knew that I was clever with the ball and could cover the full-backs as well. He was a very good complement to me, and vice versa. It is difficult to explain in some ways. I can’t say how, but it was just perfect.”

Terry also believes striker Drogba, playing in his first of nine seasons at the club across two spells (2004-12, 2014-15) should get some credit because of the way he helped out when Chelsea were defending against free kicks and corners. “Didier was immense,” he insists. “A lot of the teams were big physically, like Bolton, and many were strong at set pieces. Him coming back and wanting to defend them was part of it as well. We had a lot of players that wanted to get their head on it, to do their jobs. Everyone bought into it because we had a manager demanding it from us.”

So,– do the duo think someone will ever improve on Chelsea’s incredible 15 in the goals-against column across a league season? Carvalho is resigned to it happening at some point. Terry doesn’t see it happening in the near future, but regrets not setting an even tougher target.

“I think of teams like Southampton scoring against us (one goal each home and away) and believe the record maybe should have been just nine or 10 goals conceded,” the 44-year-old concludes. “Even though I’ve been retired for over six years, I’m actually a bit frustrated, it should be less.

“But I genuinely can’t see it being beaten, certainly not in my lifetime. I would be devastated if it is.”

(Top photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)