Roman empire won't rise overnight

Overview: Emmet Malone on how, despite Chelsea's summer splurge, Manchester United are still the team to beat in the Premiership

Money, we know, keeps the football world spinning on its axis and with so little of it about it is easy to see why the game's momentum has been all but lost these past few months. In England only one man has seen fit to fuel the normally rampant tabloid transfer machine and it is a measure of how bad things have become that even mighty Manchester United had his largesse to thank for the bulk of their close season spending.

However Chelsea fare over the next couple of seasons this summer will be remembered as the one in which Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich decided to buy the club for himself and treat it as a play thing.

He is not, of course, by any means the first wealthy man to throw money at a football team but the scale of Abramovich's spending combined with his decision to enter the frame at a time when many were getting out having had their fingers badly burned has ensured the "Chelski" revolution has been the story of the summer.

At the time of writing Chelsea's close season spending stands at some £74.4 million, just £10 million (or a Claude Makelele) short of the combined total for the Premiership's other 19 teams.

Most observers seem to have concluded that even with that level of expenditure it is nigh on impossible to buy the Premiership title these days. The claim by Abramovich earlier this week that the club would sign "lots" more players by the end of the month suggests if they fail to pull it off at Stamford Bridge during the next year of two then it won't be for the want of trying.

Nobody, though, can seriously doubt the impact of a club's expenditure on its fortunes in the championship. Four of the five biggest net spenders since the creation of Premiership 10 years ago featured in the top five last season with only Middlesbrough failing to generate a return of note on the £73 million they splashed about up until the end of last season, and Arsenal making it courtesy of cunning rather than cash.

Middlesbrough's neighbours Newcastle United are one of the biggest spenders of all with just over £93 million worth of talent having been brought to St James' Park and yet the club are seeking their first piece of silverware since the FA Cup win of 1955, the year Chelsea last won the championship.

What both clubs have, along with Manchester United and the somewhat less extravagant Arsenal got for their money, though, is a place amongst the Premier league's financial elite, the small group of clubs who take a disproportionate share of television, sponsorship and prize money.

For the rest of the top flight's clubs the news that BSkyB have committed themselves to paying in excess of £1 billion for three further years of exclusive live rights to the league will have come as a massive relief.

There have been signs for a while now the financial madness of the last five years had given way to a new sense of realism, and the latest Deloitte & Touche audit of the English game concluded that most clubs were getting better at living within their means and the new TV deal buys clubs more time in which to put their houses in order.

After years in which even rather ordinary players and their agents called the shots many clubs have been dramatically reducing the wages offered to players whose contracts expired during the close season - Fulham reportedly offered theirs half what they had previously been on - while five clubs, Newcastle United and Middlesbrough among them, have not paid out anything at all in transfer fees.

Gordon Strachan at Southampton showed last year what can be achieved with relatively modest resources but for most clubs the manager's initial target is to spend no more than is necessary to finish one place above the relegation zone.

As usual, a couple of the newly promoted clubs, though better than in some previous years, look the most vulnerable, with Wolves, in particular, looking to have a real fight for survival on their hands during the months ahead.

While Abramovich's money may threaten Manchester United's status as the biggest of the big five, at the other end of the table no other club, since the financial collapse of Leeds, has the wherewithal to break from the pack and join that leading group.

For the moment, though, Alex Ferguson will start the season still confident his side will again be the one for the rest to beat.

Kleberson is a quality addition to the team's midfield while Tim Howard may well add consistency and security at one end of the pitch and Cristiano Ronaldo excitement at the other. Central to United's prospects, though, is the fact that several key players, such as Ruud van Nistelrooy, John O'Shea and Rio Ferdinand, are all still improving.

Asked about his team's various rivals last week, Ferguson simply predicted it would take more than a season for Claudio Ranieri, or whoever Abramovich might choose to replace him with, to find the required formula for championship success and if the title race follows its usual pattern and settles into a two-horse race after Christmas then Arsenal may provide the most serious challenge again.

With his side clearly vulnerable at the back last year, though, Arsene Wenger has had more obvious problems to address over the summer than his chief rival and having declined astonishing but reportedly serious offers for his two best players from across London he has had almost no resources to play with.

In the past 10 years the Premiership's 20 clubs have between them spent just over £1 billion on a combination of new stadiums or improvements to existing grounds. Arsenal now plan to spend around 40 per cent of that figure on a new home for themselves.

Wenger may be an outstanding manager who has done better in the transfer market than any of his serious rivals but it would be his greatest achievement yet if he can upset United in the Premiership, never mind improve on his side's previously disappointing Champions League showing while his employers are committed to expenditure on that sort of scale.

The race may be on then to replace Arsenal in the role of the Premiership's chief challengers.

Lee Bowyer, if he can recover the form of his best days at Elland Road, would certainly add to Newcastle United's credentials, although the fact the midfielder joins the likes of Jonathan Woodgate and Craig Bellamy in the north-east suggests Bobby Robson's man management powers may be tested to the limit.

Liverpool, too, should be stronger thanks to the arrival of Steve Finnan and Harry Kewell but it is hard to envisage the pair helping the club make up the 14-point gap that separated the club from even second place last time round.

Gerard Houllier, one suspects, would settle for the return to the Champions League that would at least keep him in a job.

Which leaves Chelsea who, having already managed a couple of astute purchases (not least Damien Duff who this week stole the show on his competitive debut for the club in Slovakia) in the course of their continent-wide trawl, might just manage the runners-up spot after which yet more money could be spent fine tuning things.

The longer term looks far more worrying for the Londoners, however, with Abramovich unlikely to follow Jack Walker's lead at Blackburn Rovers by establishing a trust to ensure the club's financial stability in the event that he departs leaving the club committed to meeting a huge wage bill.

He may eventually leave it in rubble but for the moment the Russian's roubles have made them the club to talk about, with Ranieri and his star-studded squad in a race to prove they are capable of achieving something of significance before their employer simply moves on having tired of all the expense.