Manchester City  0 Chelsea  2STRANGE CLUBS, Manchester City and Chelsea. Since the turn of the year City have been in near-relegation form, yet their fans were still belting out Sven-Goran Eriksson's name on Saturday.

And then there is Chelsea, perhaps the only club on the planet where the team win 80 per cent of matches and the supporters refuse to sing the manager's name as a point of principle.

Perhaps a cry of "there's only one Avram Grant" will carry through the air at Stamford Bridge on April 26th if Chelsea beat Manchester United when the Premier League's top two clubs renew acquaintances. Or maybe it will not. Grant, after all, could never be described as debonair. He does not wear Prada suits or suede loafers. His press conferences can be fist-eatingly boring and he is not dedicated to the idea of being permanently extraordinary. He is not, in other words, Jose Mourinho.

And yet how curious it is that Grant can look back ruefully at the seven points that were lost during Mourinho's six games at the start of the season and wonder what might have been. In the following 27, Grant has lost only two and for a few brief moments as he assessed his team's chances of catching United he showed he does possess a touch of his predecessor's arrogance after all.

He spoke of Chelsea's win-rate since he took over from Mourinho being the "form of champions" and, listing the clubs who had been caught and overhauled, he could be seen nodding appreciatively to the sound of his own voice. "Who would have thought, back in September, that Arsenal and Liverpool would now be behind us?" he asked.

Then someone asked whether Chelsea might be in United's position if he had been in charge all season and he turned to the club's press officer, Simon Greenberg. "How do I answer that?" he asked his colleague, before turning back to his inquisitors with a knowing smile. "Simon will answer instead of me. He'd better answer.

"It is a fact that we lost a lot of points and needed to chase after other teams," Grant acknowledged. "We didn't start the season that well. Manchester City were five points ahead of us. Liverpool were ahead of us, Arsenal too.

"We've come a long, long way because there were so many clubs above us. And there is still one. But if you had asked someone in December and January, when we were so many points behind Arsenal and Manchester United and without John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Petr Cech, that we would be where we are now, they would have said you were dreaming."

At the very least Grant is entitled to be optimistic about his team's chances of overturning Fenerbahce's 2-1 advantage in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final at Stamford Bridge tomorrow. Chelsea are playing with great purpose, this being a routine win scarcely in doubt from the moment Richard Dunne put the ball into his own net and confirmed, early in the second half, when Michael Essien slipped in Salomon Kalou to go round the goalkeeper, Joe Hart, and score.

By the final whistle most of the home supporters had left and one very dissatisfied soul rang a local radio station to suggest that Eriksson's recent record was the stuff of sackings. The question of being "under pressure" was put to Eriksson in the press conference (he avoided it) although, for now, it is a hypothetical debate and he probably deserves better.

Eriksson has the backing of the vast majority of the supporters and, even on a run of three wins in 16 games, there has been a notable improvement since he took the job from Stuart Pearce last summer.

This was, however, a brutal reminder about the gulf between the top four and the rest and Eriksson's frustrations were compounded by Nedum Onuoha dislocating his shoulder. Grant could even afford to hold back several of his big-hitters for Champions League duty. For City, it may need several more bags of Thaksin Shinawatra's gold before they are close to competing on a level basis.

The problem is Thaksin says there will "not be huge amounts" available this summer and, before any of their supporters get too excited, it is probably best to nip in the bud reports from abroad that Ronaldinho might sign from Barcelona. As Eriksson said: "I cannot imagine Ronaldinho wanting to play in the Intertoto Cup."