Is time running out for Chelsea?

FA Cup sixth round Claudio Ranieri and his team need to beat Arsenal today to keep alive hopes of winning a trophy this season

The beach may have gone but the sands of time continue to slip away at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea's crumbling form has not just prolonged Ken Bates' Premiership quest by at least another year, it has also jeopardised the prospects of reviving the balance sheet with a restorative season in the Champions' League.

The only balm in sight is the FA Cup but the view is blocked at Highbury this afternoon by Arsenal, reigning double-winners, champions-elect and Chelsea's most indefatigable opponents.

Not since Remembrance Day 1998, when most Chelsea Pensioners were in the mood for poignant reflection, has the septuagenarian Bates been able to celebrate victory over Arsenal. Not that it was much of an achievement, despite the 5-0 scoreline. Arsenal fielded a near-reserve side including such rarely-seen luminaries as David Grondin, Remi Garde and Christopher Wreh in that Worthington Cup fourth-round tie.

Of the 11 subsequent matches, Chelsea have lost seven, including the 2002 FA Cup final. Indeed, they have not defeated Arsenal in 17 Premiership and FA Cup games stretching back to 1995. Since Bates is a man who remembers his antagonists, and David Dein, the Arsenal vice-chairman, is his prime opponent in the corridors of power, this must hurt on a personal as well as professional level.

It also underlines Chelsea's continued failure to take the final step. The title has not been won since 1955, when Bates was mixing concrete in Manchester and perhaps pondering his move into Oldham Athletic. The investment of recent years has produced the most sustained period of success in the club's history but it has all been the baubles of cup football. Now, with the flow of cash diverted to financing the debt induced by the Chelsea Village construction, there is a sense that the club may have missed their moment.

It is a feeling underlined by a trip to Harlington, where Chelsea train on the muddy rented pitches of Imperial College. We sit with Ranieri in the students' bar, overlooked by pictures of long-gone university teams, while the players eat in the spartan canteen. Meanwhile, around the M25, Arsenal, having trained on the manicured lawns of their London Colney HQ, will now be lunching in their airy restaurant where the walls are adorned with photographs of recent triumphs. It is not difficult to imagine which location impresses prospective players more.

Chelsea want to build their own "Colney" – but not at Harlington, where adjacent land is earmarked for Heathrow's proposed third runway. Having missed out on sites in Raynes Park and Sunbury, they have two others in the frame. But a completed development is still some way off.

Even this supposes that Bates can find the cash. Chelsea insist they will not "do a Leeds" but Ranieri has not spent a penny in 18 months. The premise which lured him to Chelsea, he admitted yesterday, has changed.

"When I arrived, the strategy was to pick up the best players in the world," he said. In his first close-season, he lavished £32.2m on Emmanuel Petit, Boudewijn Zenden, Frank Lampard and William Gallas. "Now," he added, "the strategy is to reduce the salary bill and pick up good young players."

Ranieri was already lowering wages and ages, having released Franck Leboeuf, Dennis Wise and Gus Poyet, signed Gallas and Lampard and encouraged John Terry. Chelsea have followed Arsenal's lead, scouting the world's youth championships and bringing in teenagers from Germany, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands. To date, this has only resulted in fleeting appearances from Robert Huth and Felipe Oliveira. Meanwhile, Sam Dalla Bona and Mikael Forssell, who both came to Chelsea at 17 and are now aged 22 and 21, have been respectively sold to Milan and loaned to Borussia Mönchengladbach.

Ranieri insisted he had no problem with the new strategy. "I am a coach," he said. "When the chairman said, 'We change the strategy,' I said, 'OK, I try and do the best and mix young players with champions.' "

Thus Marcel Desailly, when fit, partners Terry, 12 years his junior. Gianfranco Zola bridges another dozen years alongside Eidur Gudjohnsen. Thirty-somethings Petit, Graeme Le Saux, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Mario Stanic and Ed de Goey are also involved but there is no place for Albert Ferrer (32), Winston Bogarde (32) or Gabriele Ambrosetti (29). Yet Ranieri will not be able to shift them until their lucrative contracts expire. And the financial restraints, in part down to their wages, meant that when the transfer window opened Ranieri was unable to bring in a new face to maintain the impetus.

"That is not the reason we have lost matches," he said, reflecting on five post-Christmas defeats. "We have made some mistakes but we have also been unlucky. We played very well in most of those games. The gap is close." He added: "If we lose to Arsenal the season will not be a failure. Everybody wants to win [trophies] but the important thing is that we are at the top. And we are. We are in the FA Cup quarter-finals, fifth in the league and fighting for the Champions League."

Achieving that top-four place is critical to a club as indebted as Chelsea, though Ranieri said that given the choice, he would rather win the FA Cup. He added that the FA Cup winners, not the fourth-placed Premiership side, should gain Champions' League entry. As present the Cup is just another bauble, though the FA's investment and Sky's largesse means winning it would be worth £3.5m to Chelsea in prize money and TV fees.

Although only four members of the squad have even played Arsenal in a successful Chelsea side, and only Celestine Babayaro and Zola are possible starters today (the others are Le Saux and De Goey), Ranieri said his team will not be overawed.

"I know it is a long time since we won at Highbury but sooner or later it will happen. In the last match there we played very well and they only scored their first goal through an own goal."

Defeat would mean a third barren year for Chelsea which, if compounded by failure to reach the Champions' League, would seem to leave Ranieri precariously placed. Bates sacked Ruud Gullit when Chelsea were FA Cup holders and second in the Premiership. He fired Gianluca Vialli four months after he had won the FA Cup, the fourth trophy in three seasons. Yet the word is that Bates, aware of the new fiscal landscape, has granted Ranieri time. After nine managers in 18 years, he realises the club needs stability.

It is a test of Bates' patience, especially given his age and reports of fluctuating health. It might, though, be the right policy. Under Ranieri, Chelsea appear more united and consistent. Their possession football matches Arsenal's but today's opponents have greater penetration. "Everything they touch turns to goals," Ranieri said.

One reason is that Arsenal also have greater self-belief. A Chelsea win today would go a long way to bridging that gap. Defeat, and Arsenal could be out of reach for years.