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Have Roman's billions bought Chelsea millions of fans? It depends what you mean by "fan", as a sceptical Adam Powley explains while calculatng which are our best-supported clubs

Of all the many eyebrow-raising comments Chelsea’s chief executive Peter Kenyon has made in his eventful career as a football mover and shaker, one of his more surprising claims barely caused a ripple. Last spring, when welcoming Chelsea’s new sponsorship deal with Samsung, Kenyon proclaimed: “In the last 12 months, our domestic fan base has increased by 300 per cent to 2.9 million.”

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Whatever happens to Diego Maradona, the people of Naples will still love him and the city is the first European destination for a travelling exhibition about him, as Paul Virgo reports

Today Diego Maradona is an obese, emotionally fragile, addiction-ridden wreck. Which is very sad. But it also makes it easier for England fans to drop the 1986 World Cup grudge and allow themselves to ap­preciate his genius. Anyone wanting to completely purge their soul of rancour can pay a visit to M10, an exhibition devoted to his life, currently in Naples.

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Dear WSC
Is anyone else irritated by the increasing tendency of radio and TV commentators to refer to a shot hitting “the frame of the goal” or, even worse, “the frame of the goals”? How many sets of goals do they think the attacker is shooting at? Com­mentators should drop these expressions ad return to using post, bar or, where appropriate, the nicely precise “angle of post and bar”.
John Perry, Chelmsford

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A team on the slide with a glorious football past visits a city with a glorious maritime past whose club are on the up – at least until the 77th minute, as Cameron Carter describes

The six stages of grief following a home defeat are well known: shock, disbelief, anger, homicidal anger, blame, and resignation while watching Cas­ualty. Plymouth fans should never have had to go through these on this weekend, but in the last 20 min­utes Wolves snatched this game from them like the Childcatcher figure they had come to represent during the course of 90 minutes.

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Sunday 1 Mark Palios resigns, saying: “My action is essential to enable the Football Association to begin to return to normality.” Sven gossip-broker Colin Gibson is also reported to have offered to quit. At this rate Tord Grip will soon be answering the phones.

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