Chelsea Football Club has had a long line of superstar strikers, from the prolific Jimmy Greaves and swaggering Peter Osgood to the balletic and brilliant Gianfranco Zola and powerful Didier Drogba. But none scored as many goals for the club as the modest Bobby Tambling, who has died aged 84 after suffering from dementia, and in the event it was a midfielder, Frank Lampard, who overtook his tally in 2013.
Tambling scored 202 goals in 370 games for Chelsea, but his ebullient style hid what he admitted was almost “an inferiority complex”. A quick but not an imposing figure at 174cm (5ft 8.5in), he could hardly believe it, he once said, when as a teenager he was promoted to Chelsea’s third team.
