Why are Chelsea Fans Sometimes Called Rentboys? | Asked & Answer
Rent boys
Firstly a "rent boy" is a popular colloquialism for a male prostitute. Rumour has it that sometime in the 1980s, a police raid at the dawn of the morning revealed a Chelsea hooligan lying in bed with a male prostitute or a "rent boy".
At that time the notorious Chelsea hooligan firm called the Chelsea Headhunters had a popular chant named 'Chelsea Aggro". After the incident was read in the tabloids, rival fans, mainly the supporters of clubs from Manchester & Liverpool replaced the word 'Aggro' with 'rent boys'. Ergo, the chant 'Chelsea rent boys.
Another reason why rival fans popularised the chant was that the Earl's Court area in London, near Stamford Bridge, was a spot to pick up male prostitutes, apparently.
And since Roman Abramovich took over the club in 2003, the club has had a massive influx of money and they have been heavily investing in world-class players since then. Chelsea FC does not have the same glorious past as clubs like Manchester United or Liverpool. So rival fans hypothesize that money is the only motivation for a player who wants to join Chelsea. Therefore any player who could have opted for a more traditional club but instead joins Chelsea is branded a 'rent boy'.
Recently many LGBT supporter groups have been protesting for the banning of the chant as they believe it projects homophobic sentiments.
The irony is that the term 'Rentboy' got widely known after a pretty nasty TV documentary in the 1970s called 'Johnny, Go Home. It actually shocked the nation. It followed the stories of one or two individuals but the basis of the program was how poor runaways from the Northern and Midlands cities were turning up at London's big train stations like Kings Cross to find the pavements were indeed not 'paved with gold. These were now homeless and hungry kids who now got preyed on by the drug dealers and pimps who operate around those areas. They are given accommodation and fed by these false friends who also get them into a drug habit. Before they know it, they are needing to get cash fast to pay for their keep and addiction. That's when they end up selling themselves. It's actually quite sad how Manchester and Liverpool-based fans would chant it since so many from their own city's ended up on the streets. The police raids on the hooligans did happen but the prostitute stuff was purely made-up stuff by the papers. (Nothing new there then.)