MANCHESTER UNITED has been winning more than Premier League titles and FA Cup finals in recent years. The commercial success is such that Manchester United's top business manager claims his club is in a league of its own.

In the quarter of a century from 1968 to 1993, Manchester United spent more money buying players than any other football club in Britain, but failed to win a single league championship.

Since 1993, United has won the English Premier League title four times - clinching the fourth this week - the FA Cup twice and this season reached the semi-final of the European Champions League.

And in that period the club has not touched a penny of its £8 million transfer reserve - the money it sets aside to fund player purchases - and just spent a net £1.1 million on transfer fees. In contrast, over the same period Newcastle United has spent a net £39 million on players but failed to win a single trophy.

The club's ability to replenish the squad with home-grown talent and fund any transfer fees out of existing cash flow, or through player sales, has generated big profits for the club and its shareholders.

A central role in this success was played by Edward Freedman, who had earlier developed merchandising income for Tottenham Hotspur. When other commercial ventures at that club led to an overall deficit, Manchester poached Freedman.

At that time in 1992, turnover at Old Trafford's merchandising wing was around £1.2 million. Two years ago it was £23 million and this year, with the team having performed well in the European Champions League and winning the Premiership, it is likely to surpass that figure by a considerable amount.

The route to such dramatic growth was initially relatively simple with the new merchandising director concentrating first on extracting United from a long succession of licensing deals which offered little reward. For the first time the club took direct control of the production of merchandise and, through the construction of two shops, with a combined floorspace of over 5,000 square feet beside the stadium, ensured that they would also reap a considerable percentage of the retailers' profits.

At the same time the stadium was expanded to bring its capacity back up over the 50,000 mark with ticket distribution rotated amongst supporters' clubs in such a way as to maximise the average spend on merchandise by those lucky enough to see their heroes in the flesh.

The result is a commercial operation at the club which now employs 115 people in its own right. It runs a highly successful mail order business, publishes Britain's top selling football magazine, Manchester United, (monthly circulation 150,000), maintains a permanent office in Hong Kong and has a department which does nothing but look for new products or services to brand with the Manchester United crest.

"People don't want to understand what we've achieved," Mr Freedman said recently. "I've just been to an international conference in Italy and the only people who understood what we are doing are the NHL and NBA. They've studied Manchester United and are using us as a role model, changing the way they market American ice hockey and basketball, producing their own goods rather than licensing them."

Merchandising, of course, is only one part of Manchester United's financial operation with sponsorship, gate receipts and television all contributing large profits to the club's growing empire.

Of these three, it is television which appears to offer the greatest potential for future growth with pay-per-view screenings of the club's games to supporters all over the world via digital broadcasting technology. An entire station specifically dedicated _ to the club's football and other sporting activities will almost certainly emerge in the next five years.

Estimates of just how much pay-per-view would earn for Premiership clubs vary dramatically and most have been scaled back recently after disappointing reactions to similar schemes in France, Italy and the Netherlands.

The Manchester outfit will also be constrained by the insistence of smaller clubs that the funds be pooled and then shared out in much the same way that current television revenue is if it agrees to take part in games being sold as part of pay-per-view packages.

Still, there is little doubt that the club's income from broadcasting rights, which stood at around £25,000 in 1983 is likely to continue to spiral over the next decade. Its share next season of the new BSkyB deal is likely to be between £7 million and £8 million (up from £3 million this year), while television companies would donate much of the £20 million, approximately what a European Champions' League title would earn for the club.

Gate receipts, at around £20 million this season, are likely to remain stable for the foreseeable future (already almost one in 10 Premiership admissions is at Old Trafford).

But add to that the potential for substantial growth in the current £7 million income from sponsors such as Umbro and Sharp and success on the field, expensive as it may seem to have become, starts to look like a very good investment indeed.