Dixon joined Chelsea at arguably the lowest point in the club’s history, but helped turn our fortunes around immediately and fired us back into the big time. His goals went a long way to avoiding what could have been a lost decade for the Blues and ensuring our Eighties side remains one of the most popular with supporters who have followed the club since that time.

In many ways he was the quintessential English centre-forward – rarely fancy but devastatingly effective. He knew what he was good at and how to use it to his advantage. As an athlete he had few rivals, and the defenders who managed to get to grips with his combination of strength, pace, powerful finishing and nose for a chance were few and far between.

His journey to the top also reads like something from a bygone era. After being let go by Tottenham’s youth team at the end of his apprenticeship, despite being their top scorer, he dropped down to non-league football close to home with Dunstable Town. He got 51 goals, unsurprisingly more than anyone else in the Southern League, prompting a move to Third Division Reading.

By 1983, he was the top scorer in that division too, then the Second Division with Chelsea the next season, and finally a top-flight Golden Boot winner with the Blues in 1985. To finish consecutive seasons as top scorer in the three top divisions, taking a step up every year, is almost unthinkable these days, but Kerry did it. If his rise was included in a Roy of the Rovers comic, it would probably have been dismissed by the editor as too far fetched.

However, it was the way his continuing emergence as one of the country’s top strikers coincided with Chelsea’s own return to the highest level that really made him such a legend at Stamford Bridge.

Having needed some heroics from Clive Walker at Bolton at the end of the 1982/83 season to avoid relegation to the third tier, it would be an understatement to say Dixon and Chelsea’s success in the next campaign was unexpected, but at every significant milestone that signalled the Blues were on their way back during 1983/84, our blond centre-forward’s name was there on the scoresheet, driving us forwards from the front.

• Experience Stamford Bridge and all the behind-the-scenes action with Kerry Dixon, offering an unrivalled insight into what it's like to be a Chelsea player. Book your legend stadium tour today!

When we opened the season by thrashing one of the promotion favourites Derby County 5-0 at Stamford Bridge, there was Dixon scoring twice on his Chelsea debut. When we beat Leeds United 5-0 to secure promotion, Dixon got his first league hat-trick for the club. When we went up to Grimsby on the last day of the season, who was it who scored the game’s only goal to ensure we went up as champions? Kerry Dixon, of course.

However, he had already become a firm favourite with the fans at the Bridge in the very early stages of the campaign. When he scored five of our six goals across the two legs of a League Cup win over Gillingham at the end of August and start of September, the supporters could already be heard singing his name heartily.

It was also Dixon’s name on everyone’s lips when we returned to the First Division. A trip to Highbury to face a much-fancied Arsenal side featuring several internationals beckoned on the opening day, but the No.9’s goal gave us a 1-1 draw which was much more than a point earned. It was a statement of intent. Chelsea weren’t here to make up the numbers in the top flight, we were ready to compete with the best England had to offer.

A famous photograph of Dixon throwing both arms in the air in his iconic celebration after scoring that goal against the Gunners summed up the passion of the occasion brilliantly, and has become a symbol of the Blues’ dramatic rise back to the summit of the game in the mid-Eighties.

While there were plenty of other stars in that team who played big roles in our success, Dixon seemed to be at the heart of every big moment. However, it should also be remembered that, as is typical for an out-and-out goalscorer like King Kerry, he in turn owed much to the supply provided by the likes of Pat Nevin, Clive Walker and Paul Canoville during his time with Chelsea, and, of course, his brilliant partnership with David Speedie in attack.

Dixon and Speedie may not have always seen eye-to-eye, especially during their early days playing together, even coming to blows after one defeat to Manchester City, they could at least agree on one thing – they definitely got the best out of each other on the pitch.

'It really was the best partnership of my life,' Dixon told one-time Chelsea programme editor Neil Barnett. 'He had a great first touch, he worked so hard, all the things I didn’t do! He fitted into the parts I wasn’t so good at.'

As he claimed the Division One Golden Boot, sharing the honour with Gary Lineker, Dixon was also getting recognition at international level. In typical Kerry style he scored twice and set up another on his first start for England, a 3-0 win over West Germany.

However, as the goals continued to flow for Chelsea in his third season with the club, a torn stomach muscle suffered in an FA Cup tie against Liverpool did serious damage to his international prospects. While others were staking their claim for a place on the plane to the 1986 World Cup and Lineker and Peter Beardsley were establishing their own strike partnership for the Three Lions, Dixon was enduring a long and painful return to first-team action. He did manage to prove his fitness in time to make the squad, but with Lineker and Beardsley entrenched in the side, he made just one substitute appearance at the tournament itself and his chance had gone, playing just once more for his country.

That injury seemed to have robbed Dixon of some of his explosive pace, and both his and Chelsea’s form suffered accordingly over the next two seasons, but he learned to adapt to the new circumstances with experience and arguably became a more well-rounded player as a consequence.

However, as difficult as it must have been at the time, it was our controversial relegation via the English top flight’s only ever play-out that kick-started his prolific scoring again.

Back in the Second Division, it seemed like returning to where it all began, and signalled something of a fresh start for Dixon as he quickly looked rejuvenated with a new lease of life. It was like stepping back in time as we earned promotion to the top flight as champions, with Dixon’s 25 league goals making him our top scorer, except this time we finished a full 17 points clear at the head of the table.

The deja vu continued on our return to Division One, Dixon again reaching the 20-goal mark in the league, thanks to a perfect hat-trick on the last day of the season as we beat Millwall 3-1 to finish fifth.

'It was the best hat-trick I’ve seen,' remembers team-mate Kevin Wilson. 'A left foot, a right foot and a header, and they were all quality finishes. You won’t see people score goals like he did. He’ll always live in Chelsea’s history.'

The goals finally started to dry up for Dixon after that, although he still managed a return of 21 over his last two campaigns for the Blues, and he departed for Southampton in 1992, agonisingly just nine short of our then all-time scoring record, with 193 goals to his name from 413 appearances.

Dixon’s Chelsea story wasn’t quite finished just yet, though, with one of the most memorable tributes to any player still to come when he played against us with his home-town club Luton two years later.

As the two teams walked out at Wembley for our 1994 FA Cup semi-final, Chelsea’s first since winning the trophy in 1970, it was a man lining up in the white shirt of the Hatters who could hear his name being sung by the supporters in blue. In fact, with the Luton fans joining in, the whole of the national stadium briefly put aside their club allegiances and were brought together by their admiration for King Kerry. It is hard to think of a more flattering tribute to a player’s impact on a club than that spontaneous outpouring of gratitude from those who watched him week in, week out.

The significance wasn’t lost on the man of the moment either, with Dixon stating simply: 'That, undoubtedly, was the best moment of my career.'

This article first appeared in the Chelsea matchday programme. You can purchase programmes for the upcoming season online, and they will of course be on sale around the stadium as usual on matchdays.