We had imagined that when Chelsea reached a Champions League final it would come amid a fusillade of José Mourinho fireworks. Roman Abramovich would be beaming from his executive box while his cronies high-fived before disappearing into their limousines.

In those visions, Champions League progress was another step towards global domination, another great brushstroke in the quest to paint the world blue. It was not meant to come with questions and doubts, and amid talk of sacking the first-team coach, but that background noise was impossible to ignore even after a victory as deserved and raucously celebrated as Wednesday's semi-final triumph over Liverpool.

Chelsea remain a club where the politics is as fascinating, often more so, than the football. A club where the staff have one eye on the job and the other watching their backs.

Take Wednesday night. Avram Grant, Peter Kenyon and Abramovich all had their reasons to celebrate, but they were not clinking glasses together the way that you might expect after an achievement that, for Chelsea, registered as historic.

Abramovich, the club's owner, was back in Moscow, busy on political business. He watched the game via satellite, but his empty seat fitted a pattern of regular absenteeism this season.

Back in London, Kenyon, the chief executive, will have poured himself a post-match drink and smiled in the knowledge that the sponsors will be thrilled and the shirts should fly off the pegs in Taiwan. But there was a reason to go a little easy on the champagne because he might have to sack Grant in a few weeks.

Kenyon does not know any more or less about the fate of the first-team coach than the rest of us. Only one man knows and Abramovich is seemingly telling no one. All we know for certain is that the oligarch has kept his distance from Grant in recent months, metaphorically and geographically.

Out of Moscow comes the claim that, in a year of presidential elections, Abramovich has been required to spend a lot more time at the Kremlin. He has also endured a turbulent time in his private life.

But even though he recently divorced, his children are still schooled in London and it is not as though he lacks the means to nip over from Russia. It remains impossible to escape the notion that, while he has made a commitment to Chelsea's wellbeing, the owner is in a phase (of indeterminate length) during which, with regards to the football itself, he can take it or leave it.

We are left to speculate exactly how much that is down to the type of game being played, and the fact that Grant is yet to deliver on the promise to turn Chelsea into the great entertainers, but the idea persists that Abramovich will feel let down by football until Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo are clad in blue and playing the football of his dreams.

Appointing Grant was a strange way to go about achieving the goal, even if the Israeli has confounded all expectations by leading Chelsea to their first European Cup final, an achievement that proved beyond Mourinho. “José Who?” was the headline in two of Israel's main newspapers yesterday.

Ma'ariv also carried a letter from the Chelsea manager in which, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, he dedicated victory to his fellow Jews. “The fact that I led a great team like Chelsea in a very important match in the Champions League 65 years exactly after the terrible holocaust is the true victory,” he wrote in a piece timed to coincide with yesterday's visit to Auschwitz.

With Wednesday's triumph, his record this season is now better than that of merely an owner's pal, but the fact remains that he will not be truly tested unless he has to rebuild Chelsea - a job that will require a coach of dynamism and vision, particularly if Didier Drogba makes good on his various threats to leave.

Whether Abramovich will give Grant that opportunity remains highly questionable but then it is hard to know what the owner wants these days. While Chelsea fans sang themselves hoarse at Stamford Bridge, he was in Moscow. And if nights like Wednesday were not what he had in mind when he bought into football, what on earth will he find fulfilling?

The bill

Packages Chelsea offer deals that start at £816 for flights, transfers and tickets. Packages from Manchester United are about £900.

Tickets Through the clubs, between £67 and £167, but about £1,000 on eBay.

Flights The only way it is possible now will cost £1,200 — to fly into Moscow on the Monday and out on Friday.

Hotels None of the leading travel providers has any available in Moscow on the night of the final.