CHELSEA gave the last hours of countdown to the Barclays Premiership season a familiar feel yesterday by railing against the world, in this case by filing a complaint with the Football Association against Ken Bates and Leeds United for bringing the game into disrepute, in particular for Bates’s reference to the Chelsea directors as “a bunch of shysters from Siberia”.

Bates, the chairman of Leeds and former owner of Chelsea, did not exhibit much concern yesterday, responding: “When I first heard this, we all fell about laughing. It’s the funniest thing since Norman Wisdom. I shall look forward to discussing this racism issue in the High Court. Chelsea must be bloody desperate, but this should be fun. Whoever at Chelsea is responsible has been very badly advised. Nothing new there.”

Chelsea’s action is a counter-complaint to follow the one registered by Bates and Leeds against Chelsea. Bates’s complaint two weeks ago was over the alleged “tapping-up” of Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo, two 16-year-old Leeds United academy players, when he asked for Chelsea to have points deducted and for them to pay Leeds £24 million.

While the clash has a strong feel of big egos and hot air, it does touch upon two sensitive areas — the fight against racism and the need to protect football’s grass roots — so it cannot be dismissed lightly.

In their statement yesterday, Chelsea accused Bates of waging a “personal campaign” against his former club and said that “his actions cannot be allowed to masquerade erroneously as being in the interests of football as he claims”.

However, whether or not it was Bates’s intention, he has since become become something of a figurehead for the smaller clubs, who feel powerless in their attempts to protect their best young players from the attractions of clubs such as Chelsea.

The champions do not merely rule supreme in the transfer market at the top of the game. The Times reveals today how they are also intent on taking boys as young as 10 from other clubs, so that they also are the market leaders from the bottom.

Bates is unlikely to be toppled from his unusual position of popularity by the charge. Chelsea yesterday named rules E3 and E4 in the FA rulebook as Bates’s breaches, the former covering “abusive, indecent or insulting words” and the latter discrimination.

To be called Siberian is unlikely to be viewed as abusive, indecent or insulting, albeit that Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, is from Volga in southern Russia and not Siberian at all, so the word “shyster” may become the subject of serious debate. Some dictionaries have it as a derivation of the German term “scheisser”, meaning literally “one who defecates”, although it is the anti-Semitic innuendo that could be seen as offensive. Both Abramovich and Eugene Tenenbaum, his right-hand man at Chelsea, are of Jewish descent.

Bates has touched on differences in attitudes before. In announcing his departure from Stamford Bridge in March 2004, he talked of “a clash of Eastern and Western cultures and Eastern and Western values”.

Next up in the early-season sideshow is the FA, which will announce soon how it is to progress with Leeds’s “tapping-up” complaint. Chelsea were given a suspended three-point penalty for an illegal approach to Ashley Cole, the Arsenal left back. If a similar offence is proven, the points deduction would come into effect.