Patrick Barclay: Tomorrow is too late if Manchester City are to become a power

For a club as admirably committed to the long term as Manchester City, the clock is ticking with significant urgency.

Financial Fair Play dictates it; City have got where they are by spending lots of Sheikh Mansour’s money but now it has to stop for a while if they want to stay in Europe.

So the chance of a second Premier League title in three seasons, the opportunity to establish themselves as serial winners like Chelsea instead of something more like a supercharged version of the Blackburn who came, bought and conquered in 1995, must be taken.

If it is, they are top dogs in Manchester and England and the global market will bow accordingly, helping them to balance the books as Michel Platini sensibly requires and maintaining in substantial measure the financial power that lured the likes of Yaya Toure and Sergio Aguero.

If, on the other hand, they miss out as last spring, when Roberto Mancini’s malcontents let an unexceptional Manchester United walk away with Sir Alex Ferguson’s last title, the danger is of standing still, which in football today means going back. Arsenal might also be at risk of doing that.

United’s return to the top four is near-inevitable, sooner or later, because the scale of Old Trafford reflects an infrastructure enabling them to buy as big as is necessary (and the recent interest of United director David Gill in Uefa politics suggests a desire to ensure fair play is closely monitored and transgressors, whether from Manchester or Madrid, sanctioned).

That’s why there was a measure of understatement in yesterday’s assertion by David Moyes that United would compete with City for the high-class players they require. And why City are under the greater pressure in this evening’s fascinating derby. Here and now — tonight and at Arsenal on Saturday — they must seize control.