City will need to spend beyond £150m on five top players this summer

But their squad is ageing and Barcelona ran rings around them

Sheik Mansour was determined to do things differently to Roman Abramovich when he bought Manchester City. Now Chelsea have become everything City wanted to be.

City were supposed to dominate English and European football with a ‘holistic’ approach, bringing through young talent and not just spending the huge amounts Abramovich did when he arrived at Chelsea.

Instead, despite their obvious successes, they have an ageing squad, problems with Financial Fair Play and are making the same mistakes in the Champions League as when they first played in it.

Manchester City were shown up in European competition again when they lost 2-1 to Barcelona on Tuesday

The majority of City's squad are in their late 20s and they struggled without Yaya Toure against Barcelona

Captain Vincent Kompany and City saw their night go from bad to worse when Gael Clichy (left) was sent off

Chelsea, by contrast, have some of Europe’s brightest players, buy and sell intelligently and are thriving on the pitch, too.

Sheik Mansour’s recruitment of Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain from Barcelona was seen as crucial in helping transform City’s philosophy and standing in the game.

Yet have the changes gone to plan? I would strongly argue no. To have such riches but have one of the Premier League’s oldest squads and be so heavily reliant on one player - Yaya Toure - shows there has been mismanagement and poor decisions with the quality and age of signings.

Yaya Toure (on the ball) should be back in City's midfield after missing the Barca defeat through suspension

Manuel Pellegrini's team is so heavily reliant on Toure's midfield presence - poor signings have been made

Pellegrini guided City to two trophies last season, making it four overall since 2011, but they have spent big

Am I being too harsh? Four trophies since 2011 may say yes but for the £500million spent since 2008, who is the young star that is going to carry them forward? Who is City’s Eden Hazard or Thibaut Courtois?

Why are they so top-heavy with players in their late twenties? Watching Barcelona run rings around City for the second year in a row I struggled to understand why their squad needed such major surgery.

Not only that, is there another team in the Premier League so reliant on its main players? Every time Manuel Pellegrini makes changes for cup games, like against Middlesbrough, Wigan and Newcastle in the last 12 months, results have been appalling.

I thought Begiristain and Soriano would entice the best young talent across Europe and reinvigorate the squad.

City had hoped to bring through young talent under owner Sheik Mansour (centre) but their squad is ageing

Big money has been spent on players and more is likely to be spent this summer in a squad revamp

Roman Abramovich spent a lot of money when he first arrived at Chelsea but they have turned a corner

City have been making big noises about the facilities for their new academy but so what? It all comes down to the coaching and youngsters being given a chance.

When City’s academy was based at Platt Lane, plenty of youngsters broke through but that stopped once the big money came in. Why were they so reluctant to give a young striker a chance, for example, when James Milner was forced to play out of position during Aguero’s absence?

City will have to spend big again this summer - I think they need five top players, which could cost beyond £150m - but how will they do that when UEFA have punished them already for breaking FFP rules?

They got into a position last summer, remember, where they could not replace Alvaro Negredo and when you look at the current squad, you wonder who Pellegrini could sell to generate transfer revenue.

Given that City are supposed to be bringing young players through, why was James Milner used as a striker?

Abramovich's Chelsea used to buy overpriced players in big numbers but they are now doing good business

This is similar to how Chelsea were until recently under Abramovich. They bought overpriced players in huge quantities, they sacked managers on a regular basis and had no youth players coming through. The difference is that they were competing in the Champions League all that time. Yes, they’ve won the competition only once but they reached several semi-finals and a final in 2008 and always looked like they had a chance of winning.

Tomorrow is their 11th major final since Abramovich became owner in 2003.

Chelsea should now be recognised as the best club at player-trading in the business, selling players such as David Luiz, Kevin de Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Andre Schurrle for big profits and using the income to buy the players they want, such as Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas.

Chelsea have a clear plan and their new £200million sponsor Yokohama is an example of their improvements

Young players like Thibaut Courtois are being brought through at Chelsea - City do not have an equivalent

You can also see, though, how Chelsea have looked to protect their future, with smart buys such as Courtois and Kurt Zouma. They are in the first team and look like they will be there for a long time. Chelsea have made the breakthrough to become a genuine powerhouse.

It is no longer about just spending money. There is a clear plan and they have shown they will be able to compete and thrive in the era of FFP, as proved by their new £200m sponsorship deal with Yokohama Rubber.

Can the same be said of City? At the moment it all feels wrong. It feels like they need to start again.

Credit should be given for how they have stayed in the title race, particularly as they had to do without Sergio Aguero for so long, and keeping the gap to five points has been an admirable effort - they are the only team who can stop Chelsea.

Lionel Messi proved too much for City on Tuesday as he helped Barcelona to a 2-1 win at the Etihad Stadium

Joe Hart can only watch on as the ball rolls into the net after Luis Suarez scores Barca's second goal

In Europe, however, they have been woeful and the meeting with Barcelona illustrated how far they have to go.

To continually adopt the same naive tactics, deploying a 4-4-2 system two years running against the same opponents and expect a different outcome beggared belief.

It will not be lost on City’s hierarchy that their season could be over by the middle of March.

Txiki Begiristain (left) and Ferran Soriano (centre) were meant to bring Europe's finest young talent to City

City have done well to stay in the title race given the continued absence of Sergio Aguero through injury

Jose was right to rage but his Chelsea side are no angels

The issue of the week has, without question, been the fallout from Ashley Barnes’s challenge on Nemanja Matic.

Barnes should have been sent off and whether referee Martin Atkinson saw it or not, the FA should be able to impose retrospective sanctions and ban players who make dangerous challenges.

This isn’t an attack on the Burnley forward. Almost every player will have been in Barnes’ position at least once in their career and commit a bad tackle they regret. And, like Matic, many will have reacted badly after being the victim of a poor challenge.

Nemanja Matic was sent off against Burnley for his reaction to Ashley Barnes' poor tackle on him

This studs-up tackle from Barnes infuriated Matic and Jose Mourinho later backed up his player

Sometimes you are lucky when you are on the receiving end. But other times you will end up as I did at Blackburn in September 2003 when Lucas Neill broke my leg. The anger Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier showed was mirrored by Jose Mourinho’s reaction over Barnes. Rovers boss Graeme Souness, meanwhile, was like Burnley’s Sean Dyche.

If a player has a history of those tackles, like Millwall’s Kevin Muscat, they are a disgrace. It looks like they are trying to hurt opponents.

Do I think Neill wanted to hurt me? No. Players can be clumsy or try to protect themselves and it can all go wrong.

I did not aim to hurt Manchester United's Nani (floored) but dived into a challenge and clattered his shins

The challenge was poor and the only one like that I made in my career - I tried to apologise afterwards

On the other side of the fence, did I aim to hurt Nani of Manchester United in March 2011? Absolutely not. That tackle came from a fear of someone making me look stupid with pace and skill, so I dived in and clattered his shins. It was a poor challenge, the only one like that I made in 18 years. I tried to apologise afterwards as you don’t want to be considered that type of player, but it’s inevitable at some stage it will happen.

I understand why Matic reacted like he did. I ended up suspended for losing my temper when Dennis Bergkamp stamped on me in January 2002. It was during an FA Cup tie and I was so outraged that when I was showered with coins by the Highbury crowd, I threw them back! The result: a three-game ‘holiday’.

Dennis Bergkamp argues after he is shown the red card at Highbury for his stamp on me in January 2002

I was so outraged that when I was showered with coins by the crowd, I threw them back and was shown red

Barnes has escaped a ban but my biggest problem in all this is how he has been rounded on. Mourinho went on Sky to prove what he believes is a campaign of bad refereeing against Chelsea. I wouldn’t go that far but he was right to feel hard done by against Burnley.

But if he is calling Barnes a ‘criminal’, he has to remember Ramires has made three or four tackles like that in his Chelsea career. Gary Cahill also did one against Arsenal this season and while Chelsea were outraged over Diego Costa’s retrospective ban for stamping against Liverpool, here’s something Mourinho can’t forget.

If Costa had been punished on the night, Chelsea might not have reached tomorrow’s Capital One Cup final.

Mourinho was right to feel hard done by but he should remember that decisions have gone his way too

Diego Costa could have seen red for this stamp on Emre Can and that might have seen Chelsea knocked out

THIS WEEK I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO: Watching England and Ireland go head to head...

I have become a fan of rugby union since I finished playing football and have been to Twickenham for a couple of games.

This time last year, I saw England beat Ireland 13-10 and I am hoping for a similar scoreline in tomorrow’s clash.

It will be a proper match - as you would expect given what is at stake in the Six Nations - but, all being well, England will play as they did when beating Wales in Cardiff in early February .

England captain Chris Robshaw (right) will be hoping to replicate last year's win over Ireland

I do, though, have one small issue . I will be watching the Capital One Cup final on Sky and won’t be able to see the England game live, so my TV is set to record the action from Dublin.

I will be laying down the law in the Sky studio for nobody to tell me any scorelines - and I certainly won’t be going on Twitter!