SOMEONE once famously said that a week is a long time in politics.

Well, the next four weeks will be vital in the world of football.

Who would have guessed that of all our top teams in Britain it would only be Chelsea left waving the flag in the European Cup semi-finals? And while Newcastle missed out on the big one in the early stages, they have made up for it by reaching the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup.

The league champions look likely to be Arsenal - and rightly so - but there's still enormous interest at the other end of the table with six or seven teams still battling against the dreaded drop.

In the last few days I have had reason to link up all of these factors, with players from my days at The Dell.

My wife and I were guests at a function held by the Chelsea Pitch Owners, who I was coerced into joining by Ken Bates in 1997 when I visited Stamford Bridge in my guise as England assistant manager. Ken, in his shy way, marched me down to the pitch and introduced me to the crowd as the latest member of the newly formed CPO. Then he asked for my £100 membership fee!

The CPO was formed to help the club repay a loan and now boasts over 13,000 members, and in the VIP room before this week's dinner, I bumped into the old Spurs and England centre-forward Bobby Smith and Chelsea's legendary No 9 Roy Bentley, who looks amazingly well considering he's now 80.

Five members of the current squad were there including our own Wayne Bridge, who came along with his England squad mates John Terry, Joe Cole, Frank Lampard and Scott Parker. Chelsea's faithful are pinning their hopes on these lads for many years to come.

It's not that long ago I remember Chelsea fielding 11 foreigners in a game against Southampton. So full marks to Claudio Ranieri for now mixing home-grown talent with the many foreign imports.

The function was on the night that Claudio supposedly had crisis meetings about his future, but no one knows yet if he will still be there next season. Wayne told me that the players think the world of him and would like all the speculation over and done with.

The players are looking forward tremendously to the games against Monaco which begin next week and I pulled Wayne's leg about his goalscoring, saying that I'd bumped into another prolific scorer only last week at the Football Result coaching launch at Eastleigh.

It was, of course, Claus Lundekvam, who I hadn't seen for a chat for quite a few years. Claus had asked me if I remembered picking him up at the old Park Hotel to take him to a trial match at the Staplewood training ground.

He had come over from Norway with Egil Ostenstad and Tor-Andre Flo and while I was telling Wayne the story, he surprised me by saying that he was actually there watching along with a few of the other Saints youngsters.

Flo actually scored a hat-trick and our manager Graeme Souness could have had all three players. I negotiated the fees which were £400,000 for Claus going up to £600,000 with games, and £600,000 for Egil going to £800,000 with games. Flo, though, decided to stay in Norway for a while before eventually joining Chelsea.

Egil was destined to move on to Blackburn but Claus has been here so long now that he will probably get a testimonial. He has turned out to be a terrific servant to the club.

As for young Bridge, he is now surrounded by big buys and multi-millionaires at Chelsea and appears to be enjoying it. He's certainly popular with the fans and got one of the biggest cheers of the night when his winning goal against Arsenal in the Champions League was shown on a big screen.

Supporters tend to remember moments like that forever. An ex Chelsea player on our table was Roberto de Matteo, who scored one of the quickest goals ever at Wembley in 43 seconds. He'll go down in Chelsea history for that, but he was amazed when I told him that Isle of Wight youngster Marc Burrows recently scored after just 2.8 seconds against Eastleigh Reserves, which I suppose makes Roberto's feat pale into insignificance, give or take 90,000 fans.

I'm sure everyone hopes Cheslea now go on and win the European Cup because it can only do good for our domestic game. And if Newcastle can go on and win the UEFA Cup too, we might even get extra places in Europe next year. It's a throwback to the 1970s and 80s when we ruled Europe thanks to the likes of Nottingham Forest and Liverpool.

When my last Saints signing Jimmy Case did a question-and-answer slot at the Football Result coaching session, youngsters were amazed how many European and domestic medals he'd won in that period with Liverpool.