Published: 31 July, 2014
by RICHARD OSLEY

YOU can count Chelsea and Manchester City's Premiership victories as meriting the same acknowledgment as the rest of the league championship winners in the history of our national game, if you want. You’d be doing yourself a disservice, however, to celebrate such financially doped successes. It’s all synthetic. But what is depressing for those of us who think that victory-by-chequebook is not a victory at all, is the wild sales at Southampton. Here was a club that did everything with so much more soul, nurturing young talents, pushing average players to be the best they could be, holding their own in the top league. Their factory, constantly producing eye-catching cubs, is everything Chelsea and Man City has failed at. But just as we celebrate this achievement, the whole shop gets sold and Southampton fans must be thinking that they are back to square one. The hard work was done on the south coast, the reward is going to Liverpool, Man United and Arsenal. It can't be right.

 This column warned you last week that the Commonwealth Games would be an aching bore, and how right it has proved to be. A correspondent inside says that the piece was dashed out “in a moment of boredom”. Don't worry Mr Price, there have been many, many moments of boredom since pressing send on that one. Usain Bolt says he definitely didn't, absolutely didn't call the competition a four letter word. But, you know, he’d have been forgiven he had. There are two problems: one, taking away the United States rips away so much from the competition, instantly demoting it all to a Rumbelowes Cup feel. The second mischief of it all is the BBC's manic ramming of it down our throats. The other night Gary Lineker was left in a  lonely studio introducing some curious women's wrestling, as if the channel was scared to turn the Commonwealth Games off for just a second. Don't worry, it's almost over, and gold medal jumper Greg Rutherford can still get back to the day job of appearing on every celebrity quiz panel he can find and Gary can get back to his footy.

 The Premier League is to use referee shaving foam to hold back defensive walls the whole 10 yards at free-kicks, just like in the World Cup. Watching the tournament, everybody raved about it as if it was the greatest invention since the wheel. But it was just the novelty that got you excited. In actual fact, vanishing spray seemed to slow the matches down in Brazil. With their theatrical 10 goosesteps, then the order for the players to come back and then the spraying, you can add 30 seconds to a minute to every set piece. I saw one free-kick take close to four minutes, an eleventh of a half. It's better to let them have a yard, if you're one-nil down, chasing the game. In that mad rush, you haven't got time to make sure every chess piece is in the right position before you kick a ball. Sadly, it seems the fad has stuck because people like new stuff even if the new stuff isn’t that good.