This season Manchester United have proved several things.

The first thing is that you need top class cover in every single position to win the league, and we have it.

The acquisition of Robin van Perfect and Alexander Buttner completed the squad and its now a squad game in the Premier League. Whilst I am convinced we are not the best team from 1 to 11, and that Chelsea and City can deploy a better team on the day, we are by far the best squad 1 to 26.

I believe Sir Alex Ferguson agrees and that his comments echo my view. He may never admit we would improve from a David Silva, Oscar or Yaya Toure, but in my mind our central midfield has been held together by chewing gum and cello-tape this year and that’s why Michael Carrick is my player of the year. We must buy in the summer, but more of that later. Secondly, the league is poor. The bottom half of the table is littered with poor team. Reading and QPR are the worst but Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland, Wigan, and a few others are really poor teams.

This is one of the lowest standard Premier leagues in years with a gulf between the top 2 and the bottom 8. Between these extremes sit teams like Liverpool, Swansea, Stoke and Everton who can’t decide to sink or rise. None of these teams are good enough to join the top 2 in the foreseeable future.

The implosion of Liverpool, knocked off their perch in style now, is one to enjoy. How low can you go? From comical documentary in which Jamie Carragher was subtitled and Brendan Rodgers quotes became the stuff of twitter jokes, to the disgrace that Luis Suarez is.

The Club has lost its respect… Reina calls the ban on the cannibalistic Uruguayan ‘absurd’ because he is the only talent in the team.

Surely fancy footwork doesn’t excuse his behaviour, surely Ian Ayre and the owners can see how this one man has single handily tarnished the image of the Club, or have the debt ridden Anfield also rans sold their souls in the agonizingly slow rebuilding process they annually spout about before sinking into mid table mediocrity. Kenny Dalglish lost his job over Suarez, Rodgers seems to be repeating his mistakes and his performance on the field.

Thirdly, United have established that they are not in Europe’s elite with this team. Beating Real Madrid would have been tremendous but German football is at its best ever and we would have been well beaten by Dortmund or Munich. We need to improve to win the Champions League.

Fourthly, the players. This season we can clearly see its time to say goodbye to a few players. Anders Lindegard is not good enough, his Reading performance was in the ‘Massimo Taibi at Southampton’ bracket, and we need a replacement to challenge the homesick cross flapper that is David De Gea.

Rio Ferdinand  has bought himself another season and the back 4 is solid. In midfield its time to wave goodbye to Paul Scholes again, and Anderson should go too. Phil ones, Tom Cleverley, Ryan Giggs and Carrick are the midfield core and Nick Powell may emerge next season but it probably isn’t enough. We need 2 top class midfield players signed this summer.

Out wide Antonio Valencia, Nani and Asley Young had poor seasons and the cover for the wide men isn’t enough. I can see Wilfried Zaha getting 20 games next season and another winger being signed.

Up top Wayne Rooney is at the end of his United journey and my hope is that Danny Welbeck adds goals to his game and we sign Robert Lewondowski. This is crucial to a European challenge next term.

So that’s 5 new players needed in my view with candidates out there.

However, 20 titles, this one won with 4 games to play, and in style, a run in Europe we can be proud of ended only by a silly decision and an FA Cup quarter final was not a bad season at all.

So well done United. We have our trophy back but to step up its time to invest in some top talent to improve the best squad in Fergie’s reign and build the best first XI in his tenure because that’s what’s needed to win the Champions Leagues that we desire to completely blank out the jokers down the M62.

By Steve Burrows CBE @ifollowsteve