Vivek Chaudhary: Russian Roulette

When the new Premiership season kicks off tomorrow, the eyes of many football fans are more likely to be on west London rather than the traditional power bases of Manchester, Liverpool or north London.

It would have been a summer to forget for most football clubs and fans, given the lacklustre transfer market and the absence of any major international tournaments, but then up stepped Russian oil tycoon Roman Abramovich with his £140m takeover of Chelsea, and the madness that is the football bandwagon began rolling once again.

Just when analysts were claiming that some financial sanity was returning to the game and that clubs were learning to live within their means, Abramovich started playing fantasy football with real cash, and has so far spent over £70m on players. The spending is unlikely to stop there and could even break the £100m barrier, with at least four more star signings expected.

For football fans following these goings-on, the multimillion-pound soap opera will put that old adage to the test: can money buy success? The feeling within the game is that unless the Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri is able to secure either the Premiership title or Champions League victory, the cash experiment at the club will have been a failure.

Generally, the teams that have finished in the top five of the Premiership since its formation in 1992 have also been the top five spenders on players. Without doubt, Manchester United are the Premiership's most successful team and they have also been its biggest spenders; this summer is the first time in three years that they have not broken the British transfer record.

No doubt Mr Abramovich has decided that he, too, can secure success by throwing his cash around and buying some of the most talented players available. But Chelsea fans had better beware. Millionaire owners fresh to the game have a tendency to get bored with football if the trophy cabinet does not fill up quickly. The Fulham owner Mohamed Al Fayed has ploughed around £100m into the club since taking over in 1997, and so far his investment has taken the team from the Second Division to the Premiership; but since their promotion to the top flight in 2001, Fulham have not won a single trophy or qualified for European competition, and rumours abound that Mr Fayed is looking to sell the club, for around £75m.

In 1995 Blackburn Rovers did manage to win the Premiership. Former owner Jack Walker is believed to have ploughed around £100m into the club; but after buying a string of high-profile players and redeveloping the stadium, the cash ran out and Mr Walker refused to spend any more. Four years after winning the title, Blackburn were relegated from the Premiership.

In England, several First Division clubs have gone close to bankruptcy in their attempt to win promotion, and seven of the last nine clubs relegated from the Premiership, including Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Bradford City, have gone into administration.

And if Chelsea fans think they're now so fabulously wealthy that none of this could possibly happen to them, they need only look to the home country of their coach, Ranieri. Sergio Cragnotti took over as president of Rome-based Lazio in 1993 and spent almost seven years at the club in search of the elusive scudetto, the Italian championship. During his tenure Cragnotti invested almost £300m in the club. The Argentinian striker Hernan Crespo cost a then world record £35.5m, while Claudio Lopez, Christian Vieri and Juan Veron - ironically now Chelsea's biggest-name buy - cost £22m, £19m and £18m respectively. They eventually won the title in 2000, but were soon afterwards plunged into financial crisis, and almost went bankrupt last year with debts of £110m, forcing the club to be put up for sale. Nearly all of Lazio's leading players have now been sold in an attempt to balance the books.

While money may be important in football and indeed in any sport, it still has not, thankfully, become its most defining aspect. For it is only effective if it is combined with team spirit, managerial ability, tactics and the desire to win.

Manchester United's success, for example, is as much down to the skill of its manager Sir Alex Ferguson and the ability of his players - many of whom came for free through the youth team - as to the money that has been made available at Old Trafford.

Fans will always want a money-laden owner for their own team, to throw cash around acquiring the best players, but ultimately they know that unless the team gels on the pitch and a good manager is able to put their skills to effect, then having a rich owner will mean nothing.

Many fans outside west London will be hoping that Chelsea fail this season, and that Mr Abramovich learns, during what should be a captivating campaign, that there is more to the beautiful game than simply money.

·Vivek Chaudhary is the Guardian's chief sports correspondent