Why would anyone spend £48 to watch a foregone conclusion? The champions could guarantee a win, but that seems to have hit their chances of a full house Barney Ronay was sufficiently intrigued to go along

Chelsea fans are an unusual breed. But then, Chelsea is an unusual place. A house here will cost you upwards of £2 million. As for renting – unless you’re considering where to station the consulate building for your oil-rich Middle Eastern state – probably best to forget about it. In spite of which Chelsea FC remain wedged in between some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Consider the Chelsea fan in these circumstances. If you actually live anywhere near the place you’re either a) extremely wealthy; or b) someone forced to spend their whole life with their nose pressed up against the über-consumption, the impossible lifestyle, of your extremely wealthy neighbours. Or you could be someone who lives nowhere near the place but wants to support the most successful team. Either way this is a club, a place and a brand name that carries serious economic weight for ten million class-conscious Londoners. Shouting out the name “Chelsea” every Saturday – that’s got to do something unusual to you. Particularly when suddenly you’re winning everything in sight. And there is, definitely, something about Chelsea fans.

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Strange brown envelopes at Genoa, ominous red ink at the bank for Torino, taxing times for Messina: it has been an angry summer in Italy, as Matt Barker explains

It’s difficult to know for whom to feel the most sorry. The long-suffering fans of Genoa who, still bleary-eyed from celebrating their return to Serie A after ten years, discovered that the club had been accused of match-fixing. Or maybe the Torino tifosi who, having survived a play-off against Perugia, were looking forward to life back in the top division, only to be told that Il Toro were to face charges of false accounting.

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The marketing prospects Japanese players offer are causing people to overlook what a fine player Bolton have signed in Hidetoshi Nakata, believes Justin McCurry

There was a certain inevitability about the cynicism that greeted the arrival of Hidetoshi Nakata at the Reebok Stadium. In persuading the unsettled Japan midfielder to move to Bolton from Fiorentina, Sam Allardyce had, so the received wisdom goes, ensured the club a steady income from replica-shirt sales, television coverage in the Far East and household corporate names on pitch-side sponsorship hoardings. After all, other Japanese players to have signed for Premiership clubs – remember Akinori Nishizawa and Kazuyuki Toda? – have done little to dispel the notion that they are anything more than cash cows in football boots.

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Michael Owen is a very good striker – but does his Spanish experience show that that is no longer enough? Phil Ball assesses what Newcastle have got for their £17m

The mildly interesting aspect of this summer’s Michael Owen yawn-fest has been the contrasting reactions of the English and Spanish media to the issue. In England, despite the prominence of a new hero in Andrew Flintoff, both the quality papers and the tabloids have demonstrated a touching insistence on not forgetting our Michael, stranded out there on the bench, surrounded by unappreciative foreigners. The Spanish in general, and Real Madrid in particular, have hardly raised a line about the matter – but neither would most writers if they had just witnessed the arrival of Robinho and Julio Baptista. However, the Madrileño press itself never once suggested that Owen was suddenly “fifth in the starting order” of strikers – the English phrase of the summer. They know that managers such as Vanderlei Luxemburgo do not think so simplistically. Owen could have had a future at the Bernabéu.

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TNS did Wales proud against Liverpool, but Carmarthen and Rhyl went one better, as Paul Ashley-Jones explains

You wait for ages for a European club success for Wales, then three come round at once. While TNS’s 6-0 aggregate defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League may look like a whitewash, the Welsh club did not disgrace themselves and the result would have been a lot closer had it not been for Steven Gerrard’s late goals. The real plaudits, however, must go to Rhyl and Carmarthen Town for their first preliminary round victories in the UEFA Cup.

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