YOU CAN'T BUY CLASS

In the mephitic world of football, which attracts so many people of exceptional venality, Kenyon stands out as possibly the most absurd figure of all.

For all his talk of world domination the former sportswear salesman from Stalybridge is little more than a highly-paid errand-boy, sent on missions by a mysterious, easily bored Russian.

Those of us who are slightly sceptical about the Stamford Bridge revolution cannot pretend it does not give pleasure to inform 'Roman the Terrible', 'Jose the Horrible' and their lap dog 'Petrushka' that, even if they win the Premiership every season until the stipulated 'harmonisation' year of 2014, they will still come a distant second to Manchester United. And Liverpool. And Arsenal. And a few others beyond these shores.

Status is not something you can buy over the counter at the grocer's, it is something that develops incrementally over decades of achievement.

Of course, if the acquisition of players counted for everything, Chelsea have already planted their pole on top of football's Everest.

They could bring in Dan Carter, Roger Federer and Ricky Ponting tomorrow if they wanted, and perhaps they should. Those entertainers would bring a touch of class to what is essentially a soulless, mercenary team.

Class is the key word. The people who own, manage and administer Chelsea underline, week in, week out, what Oscar Wilde meant when he defined a cynic as 'someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'.

Even in the old days, when Charlie Cooke and Peter Osgood offered sound reasons for enjoying their football, there was something unappealing about them: all that guff about whooping it up with film stars in the King's Road (it's Fulham Road, actually), and tales of 'Chopper' Harris, a so-called hard man who was regarded as a joke north of the Trent. 'I always scored against Chelsea', a true warrior of those bloody times once confessed. 'Harris never came near me, and he got rid of the ball pretty sharpish if I went looking for him'.

West Bromwich Albion is a football club. Accrington Stanley is a football club. Chelsea has not been a football club for some while. It is a vanity publication, run by vulgarians for whom modesty is a badge of shame, and underwritten by a rich man whose loyalty to a foreign investment cannot be taken for granted.