A Football Team is or A Football Team Are?

I wanted to bring up a question that constantly confuses me: A football team is, or a football team are?

Chelsea is top of the Premier League, or Chelsea are top of the Premier League?

As I understand it (or at least as Yahoo! Answers explains it) this is a debate about singular and plural. Basically “is” implies a single entity (like a football club) and “are” implies a collection of entities (like a team of football players).

By that logic, we could refer to Chelsea Football Club (the entity) using “is”. For example: “Chelsea is no longer Peter Kenyon’s employer”.

And we could refer to Chelsea the collection of football players using “are”. For example: “Chelsea are on the attack.”

But apparently it’s not that straightforward. Here are two recent examples, from reputable media sources, that don’t work with the above logic. Emphasis mine:

“Liverpool are set to announce a new shirt sponsorship deal worth £80m over four years…” – The Guardian

“It looks like Carlo Ancelotti made the break from AC Milan at the right time. A few weeks into his first season in English football, his Chelsea team is top of the Premier League…” Fox Sports (but Associate Press story)

In The Guardian example, the reference to Liverpool is clearly to Liverpool FC the club, the entity. So by the singular/plural rule, it should be “Liverpool is set to announce…”

Likewise in the Fox Sports example, the sentence refers to the Chelsea team, a collection of players, and so should read “his Chelsea team are top of the Premier League…”

So what’s going on?

One possibility is that this is an English vs American language thing. English media seems to almost always refer to teams and clubs (whether singular or plural) using “are”, while American media tends to go with “is”. Maybe this is rooted in the way sport has worked on different sides of the Atlantic, with English football clubs originally being a collection of players rather than a corporate entity (although that has obviously changed in recent years) and American sports teams identifying themselves early on as franchises, which is to say singular entities.

But all the above is speculation, and I can’t claim any authoritative knowledge or insight. All I can do is ask for your opinion and your help. Which form do you use – is or are? – and, most importantly, why?

This is one of Uncle Salabam's treasure that he got from The Offside Island.