Sir Alex Ferguson has fired a warning message of intent to the Blues and other title rivals.

The Manchester United manager told the Daily Star that wrestling the league title away from City is his sole priority for the new season. Sir Alex thinks his team’s powers of recovery give them a good chance and draws inspiration from previous title defeats saying,

"We want to recover the title, that’s our priority No.1 – to win the title back.

"It would be special. If you look back over different periods, you see we recover.

"When Arsenal won the title from us in 1998 we went and won the Treble the next year. We accepted the challenge and did something about it.

"Then Chelsea came along and got off to a flyer in the league for the first two years.

"We changed our pre-season a little to make sure we got off to quick starts. That allowed us to get the title back.

"That’s happened three times in the last 14 or 15 years. Recovery is so important and the same applies this season.

Reports circulating yesterday claimed Edin Dzeko could be the man to replace Zlatan Ibrahimovic at AC Milan.

The Manchester Evening News reports that City quickly moved to quash these rumours, quoting a City spokesman as saying,

"The club have no knowledge of the so-called spokesman Mr Susic, nor has it given a mandate to any third party to discuss the transfer of Edin Dzeko, who remains a Manchester City player"

On a quieter than usual day for transfer rumours, the MEN says that although Roberto Mancini is an admirer of Edinson Cavani, Chelsea lead the race to sign the player.