Manchester clubs are back, bigger, badder than before

In just 12 hours, Manchester has reasserted the belief that it is going to be the centre of the Premier League fun house by shelling out a world record fee —still conservatively put at £89 million (S$157 million) — for a player and the second-highest amount paid for a defender at £47.5 million.

The deals bring to more than £300 million the transfer fees paid by the city’s two clubs this summer. On top of that, there is the arrival on a ‘‘free’’ of the biggest earner of them all, Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

This is, after all, an arms race involving the biggest guns.

Signing up Pep Guardiola at Manchester City was the ‘‘game-changer’’ and while Manchester United then hired his old nemesis Jose Mourinho, the club will believe that bringing in Paul Pogba is the ‘‘game-changer’’ on the field. Here is a world superstar-elect at 23, who was wanted by Real Madrid but chose United, just like Guardiola selected City over others.

While it is true that Real wanted Pogba — as did City and Chelsea last northern summer — the reality is they walked away when the demands rocketed over the £60 million they were prepared to pay.

Still, United paid the premium, got their man and also held off Real’s attempts to return for David De Gea.

It means they can argue that they are back in the game — and so maybe is the Premier League — and no longer simply paying over the odds for ageing or unproven players from La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga.

United will also recall how, despite again outbidding Real, they could not persuade Gareth Bale to join them in 2013 for the previous world record, while City did not prevent either Neymar or Luis Suarez joining Barcelona.

In a sense, the fees being paid for Pogba and John Stones are almost immaterial — especially with Financial Fair Play eased — which is a remarkable claim given their scale.

But such is the financial power available in the Premier League, strengthened further by United’s cash generation and City’s backers, such also are the commercial synergies in place that it is less important than in previous years.

This is also a league now where Watford can resist the attempts of the champions, Leicester City, to sign their captain Troy Deeney, and where Crystal Palace can bid north of £30 million for the Liverpool striker Christian Benteke. Money is there and the fees, wages and so on will multiply. The rights or wrongs of that are another argument.

Now it is about what the signings of Pogba and Stones — second only to David Luiz, who joined Paris St-Germain for £50 million from Chelsea — mean for United and City, for Mourinho and Guardiola and, especially with Pogba, the league itself.

The fee being paid by United for Pogba is almost three times as much as Mourinho’s previous record — £32 million for Chelsea’s Diego Costa -— and the difference is not just inflation but he now has more control on transfers than he has enjoyed at previous clubs and intends to use that.

Similarly, with City, there was a school of thought — which felt wrong at the time and has been proved so — that Guardiola would not spend a lot and would try simply to improve what he inherited. But he is no fool. Big guns demand big ammunition.

Guardiola knows the Premier League is different and he knows Manchester is different to the situations he was in at Barcelona and Munich where he already had sway.

Mourinho attracts players and so does Guardiola, and so also do the riches on offer at their clubs.

There has been a sense for some time that, while the Premier League can offer big fees and wages, there is a group of top players who prefer life elsewhere, especially in Spain where they can dominate, where there is less physical intensity, where they can score their 30-plus goals a season and where they will be on the Ballon d’Or shortlists.

Has this summer changed that? Only time will tell.

But there is, at least in terms of publicity and money, a further redrawing of the Premier League landscape with its power shifting even more emphatically to Manchester. Will that translate to success? One view is that north London will still have a say in that while Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool will be dangerous European football-free contenders (as will Antonio Conte’s Chelsea).

But for all his charisma and heavy-metal football, it is hard to see Klopp stealing all the column inches and airtime away from what is happening in Manchester. There is too much personality, too much talent and too much money for that. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

* Jason Burt is the Daily Telegraph’s chief football correspondent

TOP 5 EPL TRANSFERS THIS SEASON

Paul Pogba (Juventus to Manchester United) £89 million

John Stones (Everton to Manchester City) £47.5 million

Leroy Sané (Schalke to Manchester City) £37 millionSadio Mané (Southampton to Liverpool) £34 million

Granit Xhaka (Borussia Mönchengladbach to Arsenal) £33.8 million