It may be painful, but let's hear it for Chelsea

What’s the hardest three-word sentence to say in English? Come on, Chelsea. But we might as well start practising it. For a while this season, many football supporters will have reviewed with dismay the prospect of the Premiership title, and possibly several other trophies, heading to Stamford Bridge. Victories for a team funded by Roman Abramovich’s, let us say, contentiously acquired wealth would seem to be contrary to the basic principles of sporting competition. A club that two years ago sagged under the weight of debts of close to £100 million incurred by grotesque over-spending under Ken Bates could yet be quadruple winners this season.

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Wednesday 1 A David Bellion goal after 18 seconds is enough for Man Utd reserves to beat their counterparts from Arsenal in the Carling Cup. Liverpool also put out a shadow side, but still knock out Spurs on penalties after a 1-1 draw nicked through a Fredi Kanouté handball (“unforgivable” says Martin Jol) four minutes from the end of extra time.X

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Mike Ticher recalls Arsenal's first championship – the same season that saw Manchester Utd relegated

The long-term significance
Arsenal’s first League title (and the first by any southern club) set them on their way to their domination of the 1930s. The previous year’s FA Cup final victory over manager Herbert Chapman’s old club, Huddersfield, was neatly symbolic, but the championship cemented the north Londoners’ arrival. It had taken Chapman six years to win it, but then the floodgates opened, with three in a row from 1933-35, another in 1938 and a second Cup win in 1936 – though he didn’t live to see most of the silverware, having died in 1934.

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Dear WSC
Is anyone else irritated by the increasing tendency of radio and TV commentators to refer to a shot hitting “the frame of the goal” or, even worse, “the frame of the goals”? How many sets of goals do they think the attacker is shooting at? Com­mentators should drop these expressions ad return to using post, bar or, where appropriate, the nicely precise “angle of post and bar”.
John Perry, Chelmsford

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Dynamo Kiev were blue, rivals Shakhtar Donetsk orange – simple enough, until recent political upheavals gave colours new meaning, as Dan Brennan explains

Sporting one’s colours is politically loaded business in Ukraine these days. Orange – the traditional colour of Shakhtar Donetsk – is also the colour of Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western presidential can­didate, who defied a dodgy first ballot and an alleged attempt to poison him to gain power in December at the second time of asking. Meanwhile, his opponent, current prime minister Viktor Yanukovich – the man endorsed by Moscow and outgoing president Leonid Kuchma – opted for blue, the colour of Dynamo Kiev.

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