Manchester City have are now widely regarded as the richest football club in the World. And going by the astronomical amounts of money they are spending, and willing to spend, on players it would be very difficult to suggest otherwise. The only frustrating thing for City this Summer has been the fact that Real Madrid have once again gone hand out to a Spanish bank and secured a ‘loan’ (and I use the term loosely) that has funded the transfer of players who otherwise would be at the top of the City hit list. But, this will be of little concern to City fans who are currently experiencing the kind of joy they never thought would be possible and the club have stuck up gigantic billboards in the city to stir up the Citizens and wind up Manchester United fans at the same time. Sounds ideal, and for the fans it is, because they don’t care who signs the checks or even manages the team, as long as the can see success in the not too distant future. The only man who should be concerned about this revolution is the manager – Mark Hughes.

For any of you out there who have infuriated loved ones by spending hour upon precious hour playing Championship/Football Manager on your computer, maybe when you should have been studying for A-Levels or overseeing the construction of a hydro-electric dam, you will know that by fixing the amount of money your team starts with at the beginning to a gargantuan figure you can enjoy infinite success with any team you choose – even Newcastle. On this occasion, in this fictional yet highly immersive world, money can and, more often than not, will buy you success.

But this is a fictional world. And the one thing which the game does not simulate is ‘marquee-manager sydrome’. This is where a new owner decides that the man orchestrating things from the dugout should be as recognisable a figure as any of the players on the pitch. When Hughes left Blackburn Rovers for Eastlands it was simply to manage a bigger club – bigger stadium, bigger fanbase and more money. This was seen as a natural progression for Hughes after doing a commendable job at Ewood Park, but if we were to be honest, if those who are in charge of City now were in charge then, he would not even have got an interview. There would have been instant speculation surrounding the job and who would take up this immense project (as they like to call it now for some reason). All you would see on the back pages is Mourinho this and Lippi that.

Mark Hughes has signed a lot of players for a lot of money and if they do not gel instantly his job will certainly be on the line by Christmas. As we all know the outstanding example of this was with Chelsea, Abromovich and Ranieri. Many people, myself being one, believe that if was not sacked that he would have won the Premiership anyway a year later. But, as we have seen, Mr Abramovich is not a patient man and he quickly swooped for the young, charismatic, European Champion Jose Mourinho. The outcome of that decision was instant domestic success, constant back page coverage for Chelsea and their manager and the profile of the club itself raised immeasurably worldwide. Then Abramovich got tired at the lack of European success and dismissed Mourinho. Chelsea have struggled ever since whilst Mourinho continues to collect league titles in Italy with Internazionale - there may be a lesson there somewhere.

The fate of Ranieri at Chelsea seemed to be already decided but the fate of Hughes is still in the balance. It is clear that City’s owners, much like Abramovich, will not be patient when it comes to success. Jose Mourinho has already tipped City to win the Premiership this year and this could be an attempt on his part to say “If I was there, I would win it” and in turn throw his hat into the ring once P.45′s have been handed down at the Blue Camp.

For Mark Hughes the expectation is simple. Either challenge for the top slots in the Premiership or win a major trophy. The belief of whether Hughes will be in charge at Eastlands in August 2010 has a direct correlation to how well you believe City will do this season.

What do you think? Will they challenge or choke?

“You short a couple’a mil I go on the street for you… make a couple’a moves, a mil here a mil there… you got it!

Setanta have lost their right to show Premier League football. The £10m they needed to scrape together to keep their head above the prime time precipice was clearly too much.

But honestly. Who cares?

ESPN, the American sports network, has won the rights to show what would have been Setanta’s live matches. And the US giant, owned by Disney, obviously sees the benefit in broadcasting our beautiful game to the wider world.

It seems quite ironic that a company owned by Disney will be showing the Premier League, because ever since Setanta started showing football they had their own version of Mickey Mouse and Goofy with Tim Sherwood and Steve McManaman providing their own unique brand of analysis.

We shall not miss them.

The only downside to this situation is that Sky Sports have not retained the rights to broadcast the remainder of the matches. God knows what ESPN will do with their right to show the games and who knows where we can see them.

One of the most annoying things about football on Setanta, and I dare say it will be the same with ESPN, is the fact that you have to shop around to find a pub which is showing the game. More to the point, you have to change destinations depending on what time and which day a game will be shown.

“You watching the game on Saturday mate?”

“Yeah ‘course, wouldn’t miss it for the world”

“You going down the Red Lion as usual?”

“Nah mate,  its a quarter past five kick-off and they don’t have Setanta”

“So where you watching the game?”

“We’ll have to go down The Crown!”

And invariably ‘The Crown’, or whatever pub it is in your area, is the only wateringhole in a five mile radius which has Setanta. Therefore not only are you watching the game through a mob of people, getting to the bar and enjoying a drink whilst the game is on is near impossible.

Take Manchester for example, if you want (or wanted as the case may be) to watch a football match on Setanta in the city centre, you are confined to two pubs, the Sawyers Arms and the Hogs Head, directly adjacent to each other and if you get there five minutes shy of kick-off the doors are already closed because it is too full.

As much as we decry the self promoting, sycophantic duet of Andy Gray and Martin Tyler every time our team is playing on Sky Sports 1, we all love the none-sense, the build-up and the glossiness of the presentation.

No matter what any other provider may want to offer, nothing puts butterflies in your stomach more than hearing Moloko sing “The time is now!” three seconds before the kick-off of your local derby.

Sky Sports has been the spiritual home of the Premier League since the very beginning and nothing and nobody will change that. It is just unfortunate that from now on we will be forever channel hopping and paying a tenner here and tenner there to watch something that most of us feel is our God-given right.

Their first fixture away at Stoke on August 15 is acceptable enough but then the clarets will play host to Manchester United and Everton and if that was not tough enough trips to Anfield and Stamford Bridge follow.

Four teams out of last years top five await the Championship playoff winners at the start of the season.

But, could this be an advantage? Maybe playing the top teams at the start of the campaign could work in your favour. They may have a bit of early season rust, new players who need to bed into the team and they’re not exactly playing for much in the first month – Much better to play them then than a month after Christmas.

So how do we see Burnley’s chances of survival next season?

Well there are quite a few survival models that Owen Coyle could follow if he wants to keep his team in the top flight after the first season and beyond. The following are models to consider – so do:

‘The Sunderland’:Have your club sold to an unbelievably wealthy Irish consortium, spend extortionate amounts of money on mediocre players, have your marquee manager bottle it and walk out on you and replace him with a competent coach with an unpronounceable name.

Verdict = SAFE.

‘The Bolton’: Get a squad together who look like they would be more at home in the cast of Gullivers Travels, employ a manager who looks like the guy who comes round to fix your Sky Box,  play direct, bordering on violent football and make sure your centre forward commits the most fouls and in turn is the most fouled player in the league over the entire season.

Verdict = SAFE

‘The Hull’:Start the season with no fear and quickly become everyones second favourite team. Douse yourself in Ronseal Wood Stain and prance around on the touchline with a headpiece that looks like the first one ever made. Reprimand your players publicly on the pitch at half-time on a freezing day in Manchester and subsequently proceed to drop like a brick for the next few months. Re-apply wood stain. Scrape through on the last day of the season, sing to the crowd and celebrate like you’ve just received your first royalty cheque from the invention of Post-It Notes.

Verdict = SAFE

Do NOT do:

‘The Newcastle’:Sell the club to a fat, cockney, bin-man. Bring in wave upon wave of unneeded bureaucrats (Dennis Wise. Derek Llambias. Why?). Spend millions of pounds on a striker, with a similar name, and about the same footballing talent, as a poncy R&B singer and never play him. Piss of the fans so much that your own Chairman cannot even step foot in the city through fear of being hung from the highest tree. Wheel out more ‘Messiahs’ than the ‘Life of Brian’.

Verdict: RELEGATED – And hope to God that is as bad as it gets, but dont hold your breath.

So good luck Burnley and for that matter Wolves and Birmingham. Because boys, you’re really going to need it.

Its hard not to feel even slightly sorry for Owen and it is also hard not to be amazed by the colossal free fall his career has suffered since leaving Liverpool for Real Madrid and ultimately ending up at (sigh) Newcastle United.

In case you are not aware of this document, let me break down the contents for you (i’m not making this up).

Page 1: A stylish front cover

2-3: Overview of 13 years in the game

4-6: Career statistics

7-8: Career Achievements

9: Brand values (I hear Stannah have been looking from a new spokesperson since Thora Hurd died)

10: Global appeal

11-13: Photos (of what God only knows)

14-15: Goalscoring information

16-19: Medical review of the player (needless to say this is the first 3 page section of the brochure)

20-23: Analysis of 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons (not bedtime reading)

24-28: FAQ’s (When was the last time he stood up on his own? looked value for £120,000 per week? appeared on a crisp packet?)

29: Summary

30: Contact details

Inside the document (and again I must stress I am not making this up) Owen’s representatives describe him as, ‘fit and healthy, good looking and charesmatic’. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Who are likely takers? The front runners at the moment are Aston Villa, Manchester City, West Ham and Everton. But, whether any of these teams will take a punt on the perma-limping munchkin is any ones guess.

It may be time for little Mickey to start looking for alternative employment. He’d have a good crack at Match Of The Day I would imagine and he likes his horses and he’s certainly small enough to be a jockey.

Maybe by some bizarre twist of fate he could become a lookalike and turn up at party’s as a thin Jason Manford (8 out of 10 cats? No? Forget it).

Really?

You don’t say.

Honestly?

I don’t believe it.

Is it true?

I don’t think so!

This story which appeared in the Daily Mail over the weekend is why so many people lose faith in good sports journalism. OK, fine, if you plaster this story all over your back page the chances are you will sell a few more papers. But come on! Who are you trying to kid?

Lets think about this for a second. If this transfer was to go through then two certain American businessmen would be living in protective custody for the rest of their lives. If the Glazers had to bring in a security firm to protect their Florida home for simply buying Manchester United, then God knows what would happen to Mr Hicks and Mr Gillett if they were to sell El Nino to their most hated of rivals. The East Lancs Road would resemble a scene from ‘The Warriors’, with less face paint and more Kappa tracksuits.

I urge anyone who reads stories of possible transfers this Summer to take with a pinch of salt any quote which is credited to a ‘club source’ or an ‘insider’.

You cannot be naive enough to think that some of these ‘sources’ are not simply fabricated to add a legitimacy to the story, no matter how spurious. But, it does make you wonder that who the ‘insider’ really is and how much their testimony would add any weight to an article if you knew who they were.

What about Big Derek who comes round once every three months to check the smoke alarms at Carrington?

Or Joyce in the tea room with the twitch and the club foot? Who’ll tell anyone anything for £50 because she’s collecting the full range of ‘Princess Diana Memorial Plates’ from QVC.  Because “One day they’ll be worth something.”

I’m sure they will Joyce. But here is the issue. It is the time of the year when your average British male is left with a void in his life which will not be filled until the first kick of the Community (its Charity, we all know it, but such is life) Shield in August.

You start to  hear your girlfriend coming out with quips such as “What shall we do on Saturday?” without a hint of sarcasm , you haven’t heard this for nine months and its scares you to death, I know.

So the only alternative is to immerse yourself in the inner workings of the transfer market. You need it, its like methadone to a heroin addict.

It means you can walk around IKEA on a Saturday afternoon with ‘er indoors and tolerate it. Because as soon as you get to the check-out with a deck chair under one arm and a parasol under the other, you notice another addict in the aisle next to you, clearly a shell of his former self, and you can say:

“Looks like Ronaldo’s off then”  and he’ll reply with “Good, I can’t stand the diving ponce. Looks like City are after Drogba” and you say “I dunno, he’s getting on a bit, they’d be better off with Tevez, I can’t believe Fergie’s not gonna keep him.”

And so it continues every week until your one true love returns to you. This is why we are happy to digest this claptrap that we read on the back pages over the hot months, because there is no alternative.

Don’t worry though. Only eight more trips to IKEA.

There is no doubting he is a wonderful talent. But, if his dream move to Real did not materialise this summer he would surely have been a disruptive influence at Carrington. We have all seen that petulance is as much a Ronaldo attribute as his trademark free-kicks.

So where does this leave United (apart from with the thick end of £100m in their sky rocket)?

It looks like there is going to be no Ronaldo or Tevez at Old Trafford next season and speculation on new signings will be rampant over the next month or so. Ferguson has had the amazing ability over the years to build new teams after losing big names. But can he do it again?

One advantage that United do have is the obvious financial turmoil at Anfield. As the champions closest rivals last season, you would think that Liverpool would be rubbing their hands together at the thought of United losing Ronaldo and Tevez. But, it is becoming increasing evident that they do not have two pesetas to rub together to strengthen their squad in any substantial way.

Lets look at the names being mentioned as possible signings:

MANCHESTER UNITED – Karim Benzema, Frank Ribery, Antonia Valencia.

CHELSEA – Sergio Aguero, Pato, David Villa.

And then…

LIVERPOOL – Glen Johnson, Tuncay Sanli, Alvaro Negredo.

Couple the problem’s with signing players with the possibility of star names leaving, we’re talking Xabi Alonso and Javier Maschesrano, and Liverpool’s house of cards come come tumbling down before they’ve had the chance to win a hand or two.

Its starting to look that all the good work at Anfield over the last year is going to be for nothing unless the club is sold and funds are made available by a different contributor. Chelsea look like they’re willing to put their hand in their pocket again and with that in mind look the most likely to mount a serious challenge to United next season.

What is without doubt is that we are going to be looking at a very difference Premiership next year. Whether it will be a positive change for the league will become clear in due course.