The season slips away for Manchester City as they prove they can’t buy a team, just a collection of overpaid primadonna’s.

Losing David Silva to injury, Sergio Aguero to form and foot spray and Mario Balotelli to lunacy, compounded by Yaya Toure’s poorly knee and Roberto Mancini’s poor English and you have disarray. Loss of form, loss of temperament and loss of games. City are a massive club.

Meanwhile the Red machine rolls on, with a routine win against QPR who didn’t manage a shot on goal in the entire game, another wasteful performance in which Antonio Valencia saw so much of the ball and did so little, which again saw Wayne Rooney pass badly, and in which we outclassed a bad side yet didn’t impress the fans with our performance.

The league is poor, and we are the best team in a bad league.

Seeing Newcastle United so far ahead of Liverpool is heartening yet also testimony to the quality of the football on offer. Chelsea are poor yet could finish 3rd, and be in a Champions League final if they can kick Barcelona off the park.

The worst United team in the last 10 years are still better than the rest but close season City will again invest, they will sell Balotelli, Emmanuel Adebayor, Carlos Tevez, James Milner, Gareth Barry, Wayne Bridge and others. They will buy as many players to try and bludgeon their way to a title. Chelsea might copy them and drive the price of average players thru the roof.

We can’t do that, and the exit of Dimitar Berbatov, Michael Owen, and maybe Nemanja Vidic and/or Patrice Evra, will be all we raise in capital. A sum of £20m tops to buy Eden Hazard, Cheick Tiote or Moussa Dembele is all we will see to add to the squad.

Next year our first team will be younger, a line up of :-

David De Gea

The Da Silva Twins, Chris Smalling and Jonny Evans.

Antonio Valencia and Ashley Young flanking Dembele and Tom Cleverley

Wayne Rooney and Danny Welbeck

A bench of Michael Carrick, Rio Ferdinand, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Javier Hernandez,, Nani and Anderson. Paul Pogba if he stays, Maybe Evra too with Darren Fletcher to return as well hopefully.

Plenty enough to win a 21st title.

We have surpassed Liverpool in the Prem now, we need to focus on Europe and win it more.

The teams to beat are Munich, Madrid and Barca. We may be just in Europe’s top 10 . Slipped from 2nd last year.

Can this new generation of Manchester United win Europe’s top prize anytime soon? I doubt it next year but if we keep this spirit and team then maybe in 2014.

Sir Alex Ferguson has proved his genius yet again, it’s time to look ahead and build upon this amazing season.

By Steve Burrows CBE @ifollowsteve