Why the Blues make real fans see red

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As a Spurs supporter, I begrudge Chelsea's recent success far more than that of our historic rivals, Arsenal. The Gunners are, at least, a football club while Chelsea have become a rich man's trophy. If it were at all possible, Roman Abramovich would probably have had Stamford Bridge uprooted and moored off the coast of Cannes this week, where he could invite P Diddy and assorted Eurotrash freeloaders on board to watch the final via satellite surrounded by scantily-clad Clicquot-serving East European models.

Many Russians will also find the thought of Chelsea winning tonight in Moscow distasteful, given that its owner mysteriously accumulated a titanic gas and oil fortune during a time when their living standards and life expectancies were crashing through the floor.

Chelsea fans won't mind, though. Given that a section of them will probably chant anti-Semitic abuse at their own manager simply for not winning them the league, they wouldn't care if Chelsea were owned by the Burmese government and funded by stolen international aid as long as they won some baubles.

Chelsea are the most loathed team in London. Google "I hate Chelsea" and no fewer than 18,000 results appear. And they've managed to arrive here, as Abramovich did with his billions, out of apparently-nowhere. A once middling west London club that few cared about has now become a symbol of the shameless aggrandising and ostentatious flaunting of not just football but capitalism itself.

Just as the club has alienated itself from the rest of the game, the neighbourhood it resides in has less and less to do with the rest of London. Few ordinary Londoners can afford to live there; too many of its residents are part of a global taxavoiding super-class that identifies itself with labels and wealth rather than any community. London means no more to most of the people the Chelsea players rub shoulders with than Monaco, New York or Dubai.

Tonight, most football-lovers in the capital will be de-facto Mancunians. Only a win for United could do justice to what was once the people's game.