Tomorrow, The Sunday Times will publish its Rich List for 2008. For the have-nots it is a rare insight into another world. For the have-yachts it is the moment when they learn where their endeavours over the previous 12 months have left them in relation to their competitors.

All things considered, then, it is a big weekend for Roman Abramovich. This time last year, with a personal fortune of £10.8billion, he was a distant second in the list to Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian industrialist, and it was a similar story for his Chelsea team as they surrendered their league title to a resurgent Manchester United. Finishing behind Mittal this year he could probably handle, but seeing Chelsea finish second again may be a different matter, particularly if United settle the issue by winning at Stamford Bridge this lunchtime.

According to figures released in _February, Abramovich has invested £578million in Chelsea, starting in July 2003 with the £140million with which he bought the club and wiped out their debts, and including enormous outlays on transfers, wages and a state-of-the-art training ground in Cobham, Surrey. It is a staggering investment, unprecedented in the history of the sport, and prompts the question: what exactly does he get in return?

If Abramovich gets his hands on the European Cup on May 21, it will feel like a price worth paying, particularly given that the final takes place in Moscow. But when he bought Chelsea, seduced by a thrilling Champions League match between United and Real Madrid at Old Trafford three months earlier, Abramovich claimed that he was stirred by “the game, the beauty of the game”. In one of his few public declarations since, he stated that “the trophy at the end is less important than the process itself”.

In sporting terms, Abramovich is a romantic, which is why it must gall him that, whatever his Chelsea team achieve over the next four weeks - and it could be very little - they will not do so by beautiful means. If they were to beat United to the title, it would be a triumph of will over skill, one that would require Sir Alex Ferguson's team, who have played beautifully at times this season, to implode in the final weeks. If they reach the Champions League final - and Liverpool will still have plenty to say about that at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday - they will be in Moscow as the roundheads to the cavaliers of United or Barcelona.

When they are at their most relentless, Chelsea's football inspires a certain type of awe, but it never stirs the soul like United's, Arsenal's or Barcelona's. It has become fashionable to deride Arsenal's overelaborate style but, even if he never wins another trophy, Arsène Wenger will leave a huge legacy. As for United, they have proved over the past two years, as they did throughout the 1990s, that swaggering, swashbuckling football and silverware are not mutually exclusive.

Chelsea, though, still cannot find that balance. With the arguable exception of Joe Cole, no flair player has flourished at the club during the Abramovich years, when their leading performers have been John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Petr Cech, Ricardo Carvalho, Claude Makelele - again, roundheads rather than cavaliers. Arjen Robben and Damien Duff sparkled briefly, but neither retained José Mourinho's trust, partly because of injuries but partly because he believed they lacked mental strength. What might have become of Cristiano Ronaldo had he joined Chelsea rather than United?

Last summer Abramovich instructed Mourinho to change the habits of a managerial lifetime and get his team to play free-flowing football. It was never going to work. With the two men barely on speaking terms and results taking an inevitable nose-dive, Mourinho was out by mid-September. The mission was then entrusted to Avram Grant, but whatever success he has had has been achieved with the Mourinho blueprint of football without fantasy.

Grant claimed yesterday that “we have played attacking football since Day One when I was here, playing with three forward, sometimes changing it to 4-4-2”. It is about more than numbers, though. Grant's (or rather Mourinho's) 4-3-3 is far less expansive than Wenger's 4-5-1. Ferguson may play with just one out-and-out striker at Stamford Bridge today, as he quite often does, but the team's philosophy will be unchanged.

United's reaction to their goalless draw in Barcelona on Wednesday said it all. Other teams - Chelsea, yes, but also Liverpool - would have called it a triumph of character, but Ferguson lamented his players' failure to do themselves justice going forward. Could you imagine Mourinho saying that? Or Grant? No, but you could imagine Abramovich thinking it.