What does it mean to be a bigger club?
Sir Alex Ferguson recently claimed that Manchester United were still a bigger club than Chelsea. Perhaps he was trying to give his fans some consolation as Chelsea are running away with the Premier League title, have already won the Carling Cup, and have advanced to the quarterfinals of the Champions League. Man United find themselves eliminated from European play, 11 points behind Chelsea in the league, and with the FA Cup as their only hope for silverware. Whatever happens in the FA Cup and Champions League, Manchester United will have to settle for being the second best club in England. So it is only natural that their boss tries to cling to the notion that they are still the biggest team in the land.

I'm just guessing, but I'm willing to bet that any manager in England would rather be in Chelsea's position than Man United's. It's nice to be a big club, but winning is the ultimate prize, and Chelsea are clearly the big winners. And they're gaining on Manchester United in terms of the size of the clubs too.

What exactly makes a club a big club? Is it the number of supporters, how much money they make, or media attention? I'm not sure, but in the latest earnings reports, Manchester United came in first in terms of revenue, but Chelsea had climbed to second. Clearly Roman Abramovich's cash has reduced the gap between the teams.

And media attention, at least here in America, is shifting towards the Blues. Alex Ferguson claimed that when Chelsea played Barcelona in the Champions League, all the attention was on United's match with AC Milan. Not here. I watched the Chelsea game live on ESPN2, and it was widely hailed as the best game of the year. You could have watched Man United's game in Spanish, but only if your cable service included ESPN Deportes (which mine did not). Over the course of the season, there have been more Chelsea games broadcast on Fox Soccer Channel than United games. Clearly, winning breeds media attention, and most likely generates more money and more supporters too. So while Sir Alex may cling to the belief that Man United are bigger than Chelsea, it's starting to sound more and more like sour grapes. I'd rather be better than bigger any day. But it doesn't really matter because it looks like Chelsea will be both in the near future.