Nina Bracewell-Smith's departure from the Arsenal board brings closer the day when all of England's Champions League entrants are foreign-owned.
Indeed, with the main challengers to the top four, Aston Villa, already American-owned and Manchester City having become a colony of Abu Dhabi, the biggest Premier League club left in English hands could soon be – Lord help us – Newcastle United.
I know what you are thinking: can you take one look at Mike Ashley and, with hand on heart, blame Newcastle supporters for hurling themselves at the feet of any passing sheikh?
There must, one day, be more to the life of a Premier League football fan than begging strangers to buy the family silver, but it seems unlikely given the game's grotesquely bloated economy.
When you have the Icelandic owner of West Ham, Bjorgulfur Gudmundsson, trying to get £250 million for a club he bought for £85 million little over two years ago when confidence was high, you are almost tempted to admire his cheek – until you think of the misery bankers have visited upon us.
So is so-called English football enjoying the last days of an unsustainable boom? It certainly feels like it. Only the odd lonely voice of caution is raised: Gareth Southgate, the intelligent manager of Middlesbrough, who owe their widely acclaimed English owner, Steve Gibson, nearly £70 million, wonders if it might all end in a fall from grace such as that of the Italian game, once Europe's foremost.
Yet the feelgood factor survives. Just as the family man used to chortle ''it's only plastic'' as he booked yet another holiday in Florida, clubs succumb to the pressure to spend.
And we, the fans, await match days such as this: what fun it is to contemplate Liverpool's visit to Arsenal in the knowledge that, for 90 minutes, the issues surrounding American (and possibly Uzbeki) ownership can be forgotten.
Back in the year 2000, when these clubs' links to the Moores and Hill-Wood families were so natural no one gave a thought to them, Liverpool won at Highbury through a goal from Titi Camara.
They have not won away to Arsenal in the Premier League since and the excellent record of Arsene Wenger's team against top-four opposition – Manchester United and Chelsea have already been beaten this season – emphasises the difficulty of their task.
Yet Liverpool, like Chelsea, have lately appeared built for the rigours of travel rather than the subtleties of hosting, and Rafa Benitez's men do have the option of settling for a draw while Arsenal, already beaten five times before the halfway stage, need every point they can wrest.
As Arsenal's losses to the relatively unfancied – Fulham, Hull, Stoke – have mounted, the curious have done some checking and discovered that, since the old First Division was rebranded for the 1992/3 season, the highest number of defeats sustained by champions has been Blackburn's seven in 1994/5. So what?
Statistics are there to be revised and, in any case, calculation of Arsenal's chances of taking the title this season strike me as academic.
Wenger has too lightweight a midfield (the marvellous Cesc Fabregas notwithstanding) and aerially deficient a defence for this campaign to be about much more than making sure they finish in fourth place.
The trip to Villa Park on Boxing Day should be seen as even more important than today's encounter.
In Europe, Arsenal have been handed possibly the most difficult of Italian opponents at the moment in Roma; United and Chelsea should have too much verve for Inter and Juventus, respectively.
The most vulnerable of the Premier League quartet would appear to be, on recent form, Liverpool – Real Madrid should benefit from Juande Ramos' arrival as coach – and yet I still have a fancy for them domestically, even if their football has been superior to that of United only in the Anfield match between the clubs and doubts about Robbie Keane's integration persist.
United have been remarkably consistent, not just this season but for years. It was in April 2005 that they last lost consecutive League matches and this is the sort of form that would promise a hat-trick of titles – but for the additional obligations imposed by their victory in the Champions League final last spring.
They will return from their Tokyo jaunt to Club World Cup to the probability of months of playing catch-up with Liverpool and Chelsea.
At least Sir Alex Ferguson has the comfort of a grudge – the United manager seldom has much difficulty in finding those – after United's humiliation at the hands of the Football Association, who not only found their left-back, Patrice Evra, to have been the main culprit in the scuffle with Chelsea ground staff last season but heaped public scorn on both his testimony and that of Ferguson's assistant, Mike Phelan.
Whether United hold Chelsea partly responsible for Evra's four-match ban in not yet clear. Suffice it to say that the visit of Luiz Felipe Scolari and his team to Old Trafford in three weeks will have an edge and, if the United ground staff were to ask my advice, I'd tell them to make sure the sprinklers are working in case matters become overheated.
When I argue ownership issues, by the way, with officers of the Premier League, they often cite United (American) and Chelsea (Russian) as examples of well run clubs and, when you consider that these emerged as Europe's top two last season, they have a point.
But the time to judge a club's guardian is not while the manager is being given money to spend and the club are enjoying success; it is after he leaves.
Peter Ridsdale was an enormously popular chairman of Leeds, a sort of Steve Gibson of his time, while the club were reaching the Champions League semi-finals – only to leave amid much opprobrium and be obliged to rebuild his reputation at Cardiff. Let's wait and see how the Glazers and Roman Abramovich are remembered.
As I have said here before, it is not the nationalities of these people that worry me so much as the durability of their commitment. In this sense, they are no more alien than Englishmen such as Ashley.
But just ask yourself: what are the chances of the Glazers and Abramovich turning out to have loved United and Chelsea as much as the late Uncle Jack Walker loved Blackburn?
Thoughts of Chelsea at Old Trafford are bound to return to May 2005, when, already sure of their first title under Jose Mourinho, they won 3-1 with near-ease and many of us wondered if this was, as well as the beginning of their spell of dominance through the funding of Abramovich, the end of the Ferguson era at United.
Ferguson had, after all, already been confounded by young Mourinho during Porto's march to the European title the previous season; now Mourinho was invading his domestic territory.
The answer could not have been more stirring. Although Chelsea were champions again the next season, Ferguson's United have staged a magnificent and comprehensive resurgence, not only winning more matches than Chelsea or Arsenal, their previous arch-rivals, but playing football so handsome it can be measured against Arsenal's.
And becoming champions of Europe as well. And helping Cristiano Ronaldo to develop into the world's leading player. And providing the perfect conditions for Wayne Rooney to achieve, if he can, that status. United are, in short, a credit to their country.
Indeed, with the main challengers to the top four, Aston Villa, already American-owned and Manchester City having become a colony of Abu Dhabi, the biggest Premier League club left in English hands could soon be – Lord help us – Newcastle United.
I know what you are thinking: can you take one look at Mike Ashley and, with hand on heart, blame Newcastle supporters for hurling themselves at the feet of any passing sheikh?
There must, one day, be more to the life of a Premier League football fan than begging strangers to buy the family silver, but it seems unlikely given the game's grotesquely bloated economy.
When you have the Icelandic owner of West Ham, Bjorgulfur Gudmundsson, trying to get £250 million for a club he bought for £85 million little over two years ago when confidence was high, you are almost tempted to admire his cheek – until you think of the misery bankers have visited upon us.
So is so-called English football enjoying the last days of an unsustainable boom? It certainly feels like it. Only the odd lonely voice of caution is raised: Gareth Southgate, the intelligent manager of Middlesbrough, who owe their widely acclaimed English owner, Steve Gibson, nearly £70 million, wonders if it might all end in a fall from grace such as that of the Italian game, once Europe's foremost.
Yet the feelgood factor survives. Just as the family man used to chortle ''it's only plastic'' as he booked yet another holiday in Florida, clubs succumb to the pressure to spend.
And we, the fans, await match days such as this: what fun it is to contemplate Liverpool's visit to Arsenal in the knowledge that, for 90 minutes, the issues surrounding American (and possibly Uzbeki) ownership can be forgotten.
Back in the year 2000, when these clubs' links to the Moores and Hill-Wood families were so natural no one gave a thought to them, Liverpool won at Highbury through a goal from Titi Camara.
They have not won away to Arsenal in the Premier League since and the excellent record of Arsene Wenger's team against top-four opposition – Manchester United and Chelsea have already been beaten this season – emphasises the difficulty of their task.
Yet Liverpool, like Chelsea, have lately appeared built for the rigours of travel rather than the subtleties of hosting, and Rafa Benitez's men do have the option of settling for a draw while Arsenal, already beaten five times before the halfway stage, need every point they can wrest.
As Arsenal's losses to the relatively unfancied – Fulham, Hull, Stoke – have mounted, the curious have done some checking and discovered that, since the old First Division was rebranded for the 1992/3 season, the highest number of defeats sustained by champions has been Blackburn's seven in 1994/5. So what?
Statistics are there to be revised and, in any case, calculation of Arsenal's chances of taking the title this season strike me as academic.
Wenger has too lightweight a midfield (the marvellous Cesc Fabregas notwithstanding) and aerially deficient a defence for this campaign to be about much more than making sure they finish in fourth place.
The trip to Villa Park on Boxing Day should be seen as even more important than today's encounter.
In Europe, Arsenal have been handed possibly the most difficult of Italian opponents at the moment in Roma; United and Chelsea should have too much verve for Inter and Juventus, respectively.
The most vulnerable of the Premier League quartet would appear to be, on recent form, Liverpool – Real Madrid should benefit from Juande Ramos' arrival as coach – and yet I still have a fancy for them domestically, even if their football has been superior to that of United only in the Anfield match between the clubs and doubts about Robbie Keane's integration persist.
United have been remarkably consistent, not just this season but for years. It was in April 2005 that they last lost consecutive League matches and this is the sort of form that would promise a hat-trick of titles – but for the additional obligations imposed by their victory in the Champions League final last spring.
They will return from their Tokyo jaunt to Club World Cup to the probability of months of playing catch-up with Liverpool and Chelsea.
At least Sir Alex Ferguson has the comfort of a grudge – the United manager seldom has much difficulty in finding those – after United's humiliation at the hands of the Football Association, who not only found their left-back, Patrice Evra, to have been the main culprit in the scuffle with Chelsea ground staff last season but heaped public scorn on both his testimony and that of Ferguson's assistant, Mike Phelan.
Whether United hold Chelsea partly responsible for Evra's four-match ban in not yet clear. Suffice it to say that the visit of Luiz Felipe Scolari and his team to Old Trafford in three weeks will have an edge and, if the United ground staff were to ask my advice, I'd tell them to make sure the sprinklers are working in case matters become overheated.
When I argue ownership issues, by the way, with officers of the Premier League, they often cite United (American) and Chelsea (Russian) as examples of well run clubs and, when you consider that these emerged as Europe's top two last season, they have a point.
But the time to judge a club's guardian is not while the manager is being given money to spend and the club are enjoying success; it is after he leaves.
Peter Ridsdale was an enormously popular chairman of Leeds, a sort of Steve Gibson of his time, while the club were reaching the Champions League semi-finals – only to leave amid much opprobrium and be obliged to rebuild his reputation at Cardiff. Let's wait and see how the Glazers and Roman Abramovich are remembered.
As I have said here before, it is not the nationalities of these people that worry me so much as the durability of their commitment. In this sense, they are no more alien than Englishmen such as Ashley.
But just ask yourself: what are the chances of the Glazers and Abramovich turning out to have loved United and Chelsea as much as the late Uncle Jack Walker loved Blackburn?
Thoughts of Chelsea at Old Trafford are bound to return to May 2005, when, already sure of their first title under Jose Mourinho, they won 3-1 with near-ease and many of us wondered if this was, as well as the beginning of their spell of dominance through the funding of Abramovich, the end of the Ferguson era at United.
Ferguson had, after all, already been confounded by young Mourinho during Porto's march to the European title the previous season; now Mourinho was invading his domestic territory.
The answer could not have been more stirring. Although Chelsea were champions again the next season, Ferguson's United have staged a magnificent and comprehensive resurgence, not only winning more matches than Chelsea or Arsenal, their previous arch-rivals, but playing football so handsome it can be measured against Arsenal's.
And becoming champions of Europe as well. And helping Cristiano Ronaldo to develop into the world's leading player. And providing the perfect conditions for Wayne Rooney to achieve, if he can, that status. United are, in short, a credit to their country.
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