Buck’s involvement with Chelsea has been invaluable to Abramovich since he took control of the club ten years ago

It was kind of Bruce Buck to explain just what a benign influence Roman Abramovich, his boss, has exerted upon football these past ten years.

Gracing these pages on Monday, Buck talked glowingly about Abramovich’s “passion for the game” and about how Chelsea “engage in hundreds of community activities at home and abroad”.

But he didn’t stop there. Buoyed, no doubt, by the ecstasies of being chairman of such a progressive and enlightened institution, he ventured into Mother Teresa territory to bring home to readers precisely why Abramovich has put his time and money into a football club in southwest London.

Those of us who thought it may have been about his fear of retribution from Vladimir Putin for his part in the rigged privatisations