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With “El Gasico” upon us, maybe it's time for English football fans to recognise the debt that they owe to Manchester City and Chelsea.

More than any other clubs in the country, those two have been accused of “ruining football” in the last decade.

Not that their fans care, having between them cleaned up half of the league titles on offer since Roman Abramovich took over at Stamford Bridge in 2003.

Indeed, City fans have proudly produced a banner celebrating the brainless notion that they are responsible for the ills of modern football “since 2008”.

But those who grumble about the oil wealth which has effected a revolution at both clubs should envisage what the Premier League would have been like WITHOUT the investments which Abramovich and City owner Sheikh Mansour have made.

Those who feel that the spending power of those two clubs has warped the top flight of English football ignore the facts of history.

Clubs with money have always risen to the top, for obvious reasons.

But it was the formation of the Premier League in 1992 which was the moment at which wealth became the indisputably decisive factor.

That was the whole rationale behind Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal and Everton driving the breakaway of the Premier League. Pure greed.

They knew that football was becoming big business as satellite television opened up a whole new world, and they wanted to grab the biggest slice.

With the genie out of the bottle, big overseas investors sniffed around and the result was Abramovich's purchase of Chelsea, and the Sheikh's takeover at City.

Suddenly there were two benevolent owners more interested in pumping money INTO their football clubs rather than siphoning it off.

The whining of the traditional elite, at being hoist by their own petard, was ear-splitting.

It had been no surprise that the two wealthiest clubs, United and Arsenal, dominated the league for a decade from 1993, winning 11 out of the first 12 Premier League titles between them. Only Blackburn, where multi-millionaire owner Jack Walker was a fore-runner of Abramovich and Mansour, interrupted their hegemony.

In the Noughties, the investment at Chelsea and City stopped the Premier League going the way of its Scottish counterpart, with two clubs capable of winning the title and a small number bubbling underneath in the hope of a slip.

Chelsea broke that dominance, and then City made it a four-way fight after 2008, and what had started to become a predictable two-horse race became exciting again.

Without that opening up of the title race, the attraction of the Premier League would have lessened, and the recent bumper TV deals might not have been so spectacular.

And that would have meant that today's situation, where Tottenham, Liverpool and even good old Leicester have the funds to compete with the big spenders, would not have come about.

So, before they kick off on Saturday lunchtime, with top spot in the league at stake, City and Chelsea should take a bow, and the rest of the league should applaud the two clubs who SAVED the Premier League rather than ruined it.