Two years ago they averaged around 3,000 fans a game at Giggs Lane, the home of Bury who finished third in the English Second Division that year.

This year they'll sell more than twice that number of tickets every other week. However, the supporters won't be paying to see Steve Ternent's newly promoted first division outfit attempt to battle their way into the Premiership: they'll be there to see a side that's already there - Manchester United.

This week's deal, which allows the Premiership champions (who find it hard to meet the demand for tickets despite an increase in the Old Trafford capacity to 55,000) to show their home games live on a big screen to 7,000 supporters at their neighbour's ground, is just another indication of how a handful of Premiership clubs are coming to dominate the game in England.

Crumbs from the table are all the smaller clubs like Bury (last season's Second Division champions), can hope for and as the new season kicks off this weekend all the indications are that the dramatic polarisation of recent years between the handful of giants and the rest is set to continue.

The annual survey of the game by accountancy firm Deloitte & Touche gives some idea of the scale of the problem. In 19951996 the turnover at Manchester United and rivals Newcastle were both larger than in the English Third and Fourth Divisions combined.

The top flight accounted for two thirds of all revenue in the game that season and of those 20 clubs, an even smaller elite - United, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur - made profits of more than £5 million.

The influx of foreign talent has been prompted by a willingness by those leading clubs to pay dramatically higher wages - up 22 per cent for the season in question - and this has had a knock-on effect in the lower divisions where the average percentage of club revenue paid out to players in wages continues to climb. Wigan Athletic, last season's third division champions, led the desperation-induced lunacy by paying around two and a quarter times their total revenue out to their footballers.

As a brand name, a consumer product or commercial vehicle, the cream of English football may never have been in better shape. However, as a professional game based on a national structure, and involving clubs at a variety of levels, a great deal of work will be required over the coming years to avoid a complete collapse.

Not that the likes of United, Liverpool, Newcastle or Arsenal will mind all that much. Increasingly the responsibilities of those who run the really big clubs are solely to their shareholders and there are enough financial avenues still to be explored to distract club chairmen from what is going on below.

Having cut the Nationwide League loose to form the Premiership, new battle lines are being drawn up within the top flight with pay-per-view television and European competition chief amongst the concerns of the pacesetters. And the likes of the Coventrys, Southamptons and Derbys are also concerned with not being cast aside as the other 72 teams were five years ago.

Television is likely to become a battleground within the next two years with the top clubs anxious to push ahead with pay-per-view in order to achieve more unrealised revenue potential. Last year payments from Sky to Premiership clubs ranged from £1.5 million to £3.5 million and this is expected to double over the coming season, the first in the new four-year, £670 million deal with the broadcaster.

A report prepared for the Premiership has, however, indicated that the commercial value of the television right is probably somewhere around double what Sky are currently paying. Indeed, Leeds United have in the past week or so confirmed their plan to launch a pay-per-view channel by the end of the year.

United and Newcastle both have plans to follow the same route and each has been establishing or taking over clubs in other sports which could help to fill out the programming schedule with alternatives to football.

The idea, of course, is to avoid the burden of having to share revenue with the less commercially attractive clubs in the Premiership but several of these have made it clear that they will not take any such moves lying down with executives at Coventry and Southampton already stating that a percentage of profits would have to be shared out or "United will find that they have nobody to play against and no games to show."

Another possibility is that the Premiership as a whole will simply go into the television business, although given that Sky is likely to still control access to satellite broadcasting in four years time Rupert Murdoch might, in that case, still be assured of taking a healthy slice of the pie.

The potential development of a fully-fledged European league will also cast a shadow over the coming campaign with the decision to allow some second-placed teams into the Champions League already ending 40 years of tradition. The only question now is to what extent will the competition be further extended over the coming years.

Only six or so English clubs have a realistic prospect of making it into such a league - Wimbledon seem to hope to add to that number by jumping the queue through relocation - and it is the thought of missing that particular boat that is prompting the sort of all-out dash for growth seen most recently at Chelsea.

The Londoners, like the rest of the Premiership, have seen their gate receipts soar in recent years but they earned less than £1 million from their franchised-out commercial operation last season (two years ago the figure at United was £23 million).

Now, having regained control of their brand they have opened the league's largest retail space at Stamford Bridge - next door to the club's new hotel - and now hope to enjoy the sort of rapid revenue growth achieved by Newcastle United during Kevin Keegan's period in charge.