David Conn: Grounds for concern as United's crowds leave Liverpool behind

Hemmed in by housing, Anfield has a capacity that is 22,000 below Old Trafford's, forcing the club to consider funding a new £100m stadium

While Liverpool's most pressing concern is their disappointing start to the campaign - not the best circumstances in which to go to Goodison Park for today's Merseyside derby - the club's longer-term future is likely to become the biggest issue at Anfield this season.

While Liverpool's most pressing concern is their disappointing start to the campaign - not the best circumstances in which to go to Goodison Park for today's Merseyside derby - the club's longer-term future is likely to become the biggest issue at Anfield this season.

The Liverpool board finally expects to submit the long-awaited planning application for the club's new stadium next month, only the latest stepping stone in their tortuous struggle to keep in financial touch with Manchester United and so try to compete with them on the field. Liverpool's spokesman, Ian Cotton, said the club could not yet elaborate further on the exact capacity of the proposed stadium, which will be between 55,000 and 60,000 seats, nor on the declared cost, £80-£100m. He also said that the club was still working out how it will pay for the project.

Most observers believe Liverpool will have to find the money by means of a securitisation, mortgaging future television and season ticket income, as several other Premiership clubs have done. There have been hopes that Granada, the TV company which owns a slice of Liverpool, will contribute, but given the company's recent problems, including pulling the plug on ITV Digital, their involvement in Liverpool's property development would be difficult to justify.

Gérard Houllier denied last week that Liverpool's board had refused him further money to spend on players after the summer signings of Harry Kewell and Steve Finnan, saying instead that he was happy with his squad, which looks to have a "window of opportunity" for success this season. Houllier, who has spent a great deal with mixed results since he became, initially, joint-manager with Roy Evans in July 1998 (see table), may indeed find the chequebook more difficult to wield as Liverpool move closer to actually having to finance and build their new stadium.

The move has been a slow-boiling saga, since it began in bitter controversy four years ago when a local newspaper exposed a blueprint for regeneration of the area, 'Anfield Plus' produced by the council after discussion with the club and local landlords, but no consultation with residents. Local people turned up to an exhibition of the plans to find that 1,600 of their homes were to be demolished, a revelation which did not make for warm neighbourly relations.

Since then the council has apologised and put in train a formal consultation process with residents' groups. It concluded last year that the option most likely to improve the area, which is suffering from catastrophic blight, was to allow the club to build a new stadium on Stanley Park. The current stadium will be demolished and become "Anfield Plaza", a combination of green space and housing, retail and community facilities. The council's plan is for 1,300 of the old terraced houses, many of which are now empty, derelict and burnt out, to be demolished, for 400 new homes to be built and 1,800 refurbished.

For many Liverpool fans, it must all seem a huge effort, especially given that Liverpool have rebuilt three sides of Anfield since 1992 to create a current capacity of 45,000. Now, £100m of long-term debt might have to be incurred, Stanley Park intruded on, the whole area reconfigured in a massive building project, all to provide what could be just 10,000 more seats. The club's original intention, to demolish neighbouring homes - many of which the club owns and has controversially left empty - and expand Anfield on its current site, must look tempting.

However, Cotton explained that even leaving aside the human difficulties of that proposal, it was not a cheap option: "The costs rise hugely the more you look at it. Also, we want to be part of the regeneration of this area and we have consulted in detail with the council and residents to come up with the best plan."

The reality, too, is that planning permission is going to be a lot easier to secure for a scheme which already has the council's strategic blessing, than one seen as more brutal and self-interested, with no broader gain for a haggard local area. Yet the plan is still controversial; by no means all residents support either the carve-up of the park or relocation from their houses, and planning permission is not a foregone conclusion.

Some observers, moreover, question whether the club should not be looking at a new stadium project in co-operation with their oldest rivals. Everton also want to move to a new ground and after their own plans to move to a new stadium at the King's Dock were scrapped, the Goodison board are now having to consider other options.

All of which highlights the intense financial competition at the top of the English game, in which the size of a club's stadium is coming to be a determining factor for success. Perhaps Liverpool's vision can be faulted, given that they redeveloped the Centenary Stand in 1992 - with a £2m grant of public money from the Football Trust - the Kop in 1995 and the Anfield Road stand in 1998, and all are now to be demolished. Yet in the first round of building after the post-Hillsborough Taylor Report, no club really foresaw how much of an advantage stadium capacity was going to provide for Manchester United.

With none of the local planning problems which give Liverpool and Arsenal their headaches, United have quietly and periodically slapped extra tiers on to Old Trafford, reaching the current 67,700 capacity as long ago as 2000, all of it paid for. So while Liverpool were still emerging from the 'Anfield Plus' débâcle and taking the slow road to neighbourhood agreement, and Arsenal were lurching from one abortive scheme for Highbury to another, United were ploughing ahead, to the background music of ringing cash tills.

In the Premier League, television money can be seen as a level playing field, there to be earned by all clubs according to their success. When Arsenal won the Double in 2002, they earned more from TV than United. But the stadium is the one unique commercial factor each club has, and so is becoming the key divide between them. The statistics which frighten Liverpool's chief executive, Rick Parry, and Arsenal's board wrestling with their latest stalled new stadium project at Ashburton Grove, are that every match United have nearly twice the capacity of Highbury, and 22,000 seats more than Anfield. United have 180 hospitality boxes which are full and have a 10-year waiting list, and vast suites for pre-match corporate scoffing. So, while in the most recent accounts, for 2002, Arsenal's match-day income was £24.5m and Liverpool's £30.6m, United's was £56.3m, more than the other two clubs put together. And every match, every season, the gap grows, which in turn boosts all United's other commercial activities and their overall "brand". This led, to cite just one example, to Nike paying United £303m over 13 years for their sponsorship deal, £23m-a-season, while Arsenal trumpeted theirs last week, £55m over 7 years, worth far less, £7.8m-a-season. Overall income last year for United was £146m, 60 per cent higher than Arsenal's £90m even though Arsenal did the Double, 40 per cent higher than Liverpool's £98m.

This all translates to dominance on the pitch, as money increasingly determines sporting success in football's market free-for-all. Arsenal lost £23m in their Double year - while United made a £25m profit - and the banks have called for more clarity over the spectacular complexities of the £400m Ashburton Grove plan. This summer the club appeared to be facing up to the severity of their situation for the first time. Only one player was signed, the goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, and the manager, Arsène Wenger, battled to retain Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry. United, meanwhile, sold four players, including receiving £25m for David Beckham and £15m for Juan Sebastian Veron, signed five, including Kleberson and Cristiano Ronaldo, for £24m, pocketing a £16m difference, reducing the squad's average age to 24 and also, according to sources at the club, bringing the wage bill significantly down.

All of this makes the eyes water in the Liverpool and Arsenal boardrooms. The Premier League is being stretched financially by United, who, match after match, year after year, make twice Arsenal's income and nearly twice Liverpool's, through what used, in another age, to be called the gate. Rick Parry has said that doing nothing was never an option, but they are years behind United, with a difficult planning process ahead.

Peter Bevington, spokesman for the local community steering group, said: "We have come an extraordinarily long way since ' Anfield Plus' and we don't expect major surprises from the club. But the local residents still have real concerns, in particular about the old Anfield site, and about their own housing. We constantly hear the same worry: will this scheme definitely benefit the local people?"

United, blessed by accident of location with acres of tarmac to expand into, are, in financial terms, pulling ever further away from their rivals, stuck resentfully at their historic homes, with huge debts still to incur, mired in their local difficulties.