Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea transfer response to Nunez and Haaland deals

So much for Manchester City and Liverpool's rivals closing the gap on them this summer.

If anything the gulf has just widened after City confirmed their £51million signing of goal machine Erling Haaland with Liverpool set to confirm Darwin Nunez's capture for a potential club record £85million.

It is scary to think how good City and Liverpool will be with those two world-class strikers in their attacks and it heaps pressure on their rivals Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal to react. This summer was already a huge one for United with Erik ten Hag taking over following the disaster that was Wreck-it-Ralf Rangnick.

Nunez's decision to jump at the chance to join Liverpool and snub United is a sobering reminder of how far they have fallen behind their Merseyside rivals. Signing for United did not even enter Nunez's thoughts this summer when he knew he would probably leave Benfica and this underlines how hard it will be for them to sign the calibre of player they want.

Potential signings look at United and while they know all about the club's great history, they see a side with no chance of competing for the game's big prizes. They are at least two years away from challenging for the Premier League and will have to make do with the Europa League next season.

Of course, they can still throw tens of millions at signing players, but look where that has landed them over the last four or five years. Ten Hag cannot even persuade some of his former Ajax stars to join him at Old Trafford and Dutch midfielder Ryan Gravenberch has turned them down for Bayern Munich. Gravenberch said: "Manchester United is a very big and nice club. But I already had such a good feeling with Bayern and I had given them my word."

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Chelsea are also struggling to avoid falling further behind City and Liverpool and they need to rebuild their defence following the exits of Antonio Rudiger, Andreas Christensen and Marcos Alonso.

They also have the £97million problem of Romelu Lukaku to resolve and does Thomas Tuchel cut his losses or try again with him? Antonio Conte has already told Tottenham they must spend big this summer to match his ambition and hang onto him.

The Italian will hardly be raving about the single signing so far of Fraser Forster on a Bosman from Southampton and they have much work to do.

They like Richarlison and may be able to land him from Everton for around £50million. That would be a start, but they need much more to close the gap on City and Liverpool. Arsenal are also in a hole and they need a new strike force after offloading Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette.

Like United, they do not have the carrot of Champions League football and Dusan Vlahovic summed up their lack of appeal when he claimed he was not interested in their offer to move to the Emirates before joining Juventus in January. The summer is only a couple of weeks old, but it already looks like being a long one for City and Liverpool's rivals unless they get busy in the transfer market.