The gold rush starts

The Premiership may be four weeks old but for Arsene Wenger, Claudio Ranieri and Sir Alex Ferguson their seasons start in earnest in the next two days.

For all the importance, excitement and prestige attached to the domestic competition, the Champions League is the one they care most about and the group stage is its real beginning.

Tomorrow, Chelsea kick off at Sparta Prague in Group G and United take on Panathinaikos at Old Trafford in Group E. Highbury is the venue for Arsenal's Group B game against Internazionale on Wednesday.

For those involved, it will be the equivalent of swapping their regular pint of warm, English beer for an expensive champagne they daren't let go flat.

The financial importance of success will be key to all three clubs. Teams in each group get a starting award of £1.1million, there are match fees of £225,000 and clubs get the same amount for a win and half as much for a draw.

There are bonuses for reaching the knockout rounds, going from £1.1m for getting past the group stage rising to £4.5m for the winners.

Each national market has a pool of cash and the English one is usually one of the more lucrative. The amount that will be in the TV pool is not known yet but the Premiership team who get furthest receive the biggest share. As the money only has to go between three English clubs this year they should do better than last season's four group stage entrants.

That is good news for Arsenal, who made £16.3m from the last competition, as they try to raise more than £200m for a new stadium at Ashburton Grove.

Wenger may not have spent much in the summer, but the European Cup is the major title he is desperate to bring to Arsenal and the one competition in which his team have largely disappointed.

The ambition to win the continent's main club competition and move to a new stadium so they can compete each year was key in Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires signing new contracts this summer.

Wenger's squad are experienced in the competition after qualifying in each of the previous five seasons. But despite registering 47 players for the group stage, Arsenal have only 16 established outfield players among them and one European Cup winner, the increasingly peripheral Nwankwo Kanu, who was a substitute for Ajax in 1995.

The rest of the squad have three senior goalkeepers, four players who have gone on loan to other clubs and 24 youngsters with little or no first-team experience.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the average age of the squad is only 23 but the position is similar at Old Trafford where United registered 41 players for the Champions League with an average age of 22.

They have three senior goalkeepers and only 15 established outfield players, but teenager Cristiano Ronaldo is also bound to play a big part in their campaign and Eric Djemba-Djemba, also signed this summer, should feature.

Four of the players who featured in Manchester United's 1999 final triumph over Bayern Munich are still there.

They have another two who were on the bench on that famous night and even though he has fallen out of favour with Ferguson, Fabien Barthez also has a winners' medal from Marseille in 1993.

Everyone in Europe will be curious to see how Chelsea's 40-strong squad performs. New owner Roman Abramovich will want some sort of return on his £111m he spent giving Chelsea the greatest number of established players - 21 - of all three English clubs.

The average age is 23 but Ranieri can rely on two previous European Cup winners in Marcel Desailly, who succeeded with Marseille and Milan, and Claude Makelele, a champion with Real Madrid.

All three multi-national squads have enough good players for their sides to make a real impact this season and provide an advert for the Premier League. The waiting is nearly over.