Caller,
In one sense I agree with you, that the money is now coming from different and more plentiful sources (although maybe not in Manure's case!) but Chelsea weren't the first, Blackburn were, and they were widely despised for having 'bought' the title at the time. Fulham also dabbled without much success, except for promotion to the PL) and Leeds have shown what the consequences can be.
All of the 3 'big' teams challenging Chelsea have long histories of success, and with the exception of Arsenal, that has been built on a huge fan base and good homegrown youth policies. Neither Chelsea or Arsenal have these traditions, which is one of the reasons Chelsea would be in trouble if Abramovich decided he'd had enough, whereas Arsenal have always struggled to a certain extent financially when competing for the best players in the transfer market, and have had to rely on Wenger's skill at finding and nurturing some of the best young foreign talents - if Wenger goes then Arsenal will also find it difficult.
The point with all of the money men behind the various clubs is that the money available from Abramovich completely dwarfs anyone else, which is very nice for Chelsea but brings with it the same criticism that Blackburn faced. The other 3 don't get that criticism because they had already achieved success without outside money; however to stay where they were they have had to restructure financially because of Abramovich.
This has had a ripple effect through most clubs in the PL and outside and it will now take a miraculous season for anyone outside of those top 4 to win the title or even qualify for the Champions League, which I believe is bad for football, particularly when it means that, increasingly, homegrown players don't get a look in. The top four each only have about 3 or 4 English players in their normal first XI (MU - Ferdinand, Neville, Scholes, Rooney; Chelsea - Terry, Cole, Lampard, Cole; Liverpool - Carragher, Gerrard, Crouch; Arsenal - none), and it's not much better in the rest of the teams.
Football is still a great game but sadly not the same as it was, and mainly for 2 reasons - the EU rules and Mr Bosman. Without those we would still have a majority of English players playing for English teams (and Spanish for Spanish etc) and players and clubs would have more loyalty to each other. It would also mean that my club would not have got into such a mess! I wonder if they can sue the EU....?
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)