After a long break, English Premier League is starting on 11th August. Twenty clubs are ready to try out their talents, tactics and luck to win the league. Along with last years 17 teams, Birmingham, Sunderland, and Derby joined for the championship of 2007-8 season. For the last two months, almost all clubs were very much active in the transfer market insearch of the best player according to their requirement. Transfer market was much active than last year and the top order clubs were busy in picking up the suitable players for their team. In this episode, i am scribbling about two clubs, one was known for big spending and another was the leader in the transfer market for more than one decade but lost out to the other.

There are few differences from last year's transfer activity. First one is the silence of Chelsea, who use to spend nearly 50 million pounds every year for last couple of seasons. They usually heats up the market by spending huge amount for players without any hesitation and this time Chelsea decided not to splash money and moved to get good players who completed their contratcs with others clubs and now being free to move to another club. They got Steve Sidwell and Claudio Pizzaro on free transfer and they spend very nominal amount to PSV Eindhovan for the service of the Brazilian defender Alex. They also landed up Ben Haim from Bolton on free. Apart from these three proved players, they brought Florent Malouda from French champion Lyon for 13 million pounds. Interestingly, for the first time in few years, they will make a profit form the transfer market, if the manage to sell Aryan Robben to Real Madrid for more than 20 million pounds. Along with Malouda, they are trying to land up Daniel Alves, a Brazilian full back from Sevilla, which will cost them around 20 million pounds. So, Chelsea's transfer activity will be very much controll in the accounts formalities.

Except for the last three years, Manchester United use to lead the business in the transfer market. After few years, they repeated the show this time by spending more than 50 million pounds in the market for 4 players. They splashed money on two young talents from Portugal and Brazil, both were playing for Portuguese clubs. Nani, the winger and Andersson the midfielder were still in their teen age but there is no one better than United manager Sir Alex to assess the potential and talent of those youngsters. While Rayan Giggs and Paul Scholes are moving towards the end of their career, Sir Alex had no option rather than filling those positions with best players of tomorrow. Last year, he missed out in the transfer of Oven Hargraves, who was playing for Bayren Munich. He kept that money intact and used it this year to land up this English talent, who is capable to fill the gap left by their prolific captain Roy Keane. Last year, United sold their ace striker Ruud Van Nistelrooy to Real Madrid and didn't fill that position. Without a striker like Nistelrooy, his team managed to win the league but Fergusson is the better than anyone to realise the demand for a striker. As what he always do, sir Alex moved quickly to get one of the best striker in the league also considered as best in the world. Carlos Tavez was the sensation of the last years world cup team of Argentina and he uplived that expectation with WestHam United in the last season. Because of the transfer irregularities, Tavez bid was not worked out so far but yesterday's compromise talkes between West Ham and Kia -the man who owns transfer rights.. will allow him to move to Manchester United very soon. This will be a huge boost for United for their display in the league and also in Champions League.

Here, between Chelsea and Manchester United, the fight is not just between two clubs, it is more than that. It is for the domination of the league and extend domination to Champions League. The Russian owner of Chelsea was generous for last few years in the transfer market, but he decided to keep his purse in the locker and asked the club to find resources to get better players. But, they already have enmassed huge amount of talent in the club and they have an experienced coach in Jose Morinho. On the other hand, Manchester United has gone through some difficult patch in the last few years. The club was brought over by Glazer family of United States. They took huge loan to arrange finance to gain control of United. This affected their transfer spending for few years. United manager Sir Alex did a fantastic job in keeping the spirit up in United camp in those dark days and one things started getting in better shape, they pushed themselves up and won the league. League championship and semi-final berth last Champions league supported them financially and allowed them to splash money in the market to gain the best players available.

Tomorrow is the curtain raiser of this season's premier league. Manchester United and Chelsea will fight for Community Shield in Wembly. One week after this, the league starts. We will get a chance to asses the performance of those teams and will be able to compare that the spending is helping them in ther purpose.