NOT unlike Sir Alex Ferguson and a few of his players, the Manchester United brand looked like a spent force last autumn as Vodafone terminated its sponsorship deal with the club. But, just as the team has enjoyed an overdue resurgence in recent months, so did the Old Trafford empire strike back off the pitch yesterday, announcing that AIG had agreed to pay a British record £56.5 million to be part of “the most iconic image in the football world” for the next four years.

Plenty of people were feeling happy with themselves, from Bryan Glazer, the son of the maligned American owner, to Cristiano Ronaldo, who could not stop sniggering as he stood behind Ferguson during the press conference, and not even the thought of the millions that got away could take the smile off the face of David Gill, the chief executive, who said the decision to turn down a significantly higher offer from Mansion, the Gibraltar-based gambling and casino company, had been the right one.

Mansion claims it was willing to pay £65 million to have its name on United’s shirt over the same period, but the club, uncomfortable with the idea of forging such strong links with a gambling company, said that the biggest offer was not necessarily the best.

“We passed up the opportunity to do the world’s biggest shirt deal to do the right deal,” Gill said. “I don’t think it (accepting Mansion’s offer) would have been a problem, but we evaluated the deals and we ultimately decided that this one with AIG, one of the biggest companies in the world, was the right one.”

Although smaller than both the Mansion deal and the £167.5 million that Tamoil, the Libyan oil company, will pay Juventus over a ten-year period, the agreement with AIG, the American insurance giant, dwarfs both Chelsea’s recent link-up with Samsung and United’s previous £9 million-a-year deal with Vodafone. “With Vodafone (terminating its contract), I think we thought it was generally an opportunity,” Gill said. “We looked at what was out there and it became apparent quite quickly that that was the case.”

What is less apparent is the impact that the deal will have on Ferguson’s budget to improve the team. United will earn an additional £5 million a year until June 2010, but Gill said: “We have budgets to buy players in the summer and those budgets have always been there. We don’t look at things in isolation. We look at our finances going forward into the future. But we have to maintain our performances on the pitch because we understand we cannot be successful by not investing in players and in our academy. We will always continue to do that. The manager will get what he needs to make sure we improve the squad next season.”

Ferguson seemed happy enough with that. “Whatever happens today and the financial foundation that it gives the club, it can only benefit the club as a whole and we can look forward to years of progress through this,” he said.

“But, for me, it’s always going to be about how we improve as a team. I always look at that and then go to David Gill or to the Glazer family and say: ‘This is the player we would like.’ Then we assess how much it is going to cost, so nothing has changed in that respect.”

Suddenly, after a winter of discontent, it is beginning to feel like boom time again at Old Trafford. “There’s a record-breaking sponsorship deal, we’re about to increase the ground capacity to 76,000 and the players are buzzing after winning eight league games on the trot,” Gill said. “Deals like this show our fans that we’re going from strength to strength.”

BIG DEALS

JUVENTUS: £16.75 million a year (Tamoil), 2005-2015
MANCHESTER UNITED: £14.125m a year (AIG), 2005-2009
REAL MADRID: £14m a year (Siemens), 2005-2010
BAYERN MUNICH: £12m a year (T-Com), 2003-2008
CHELSEA: £10m a year (Samsung), 2005-2010