Roberto Mancini: Noisy Neighbour Can Upset Alex Ferguson's Transfer Masterplan

Roberto Mancini began last season under pressure to produce. Now he has become the most dangerous man in European soccer.

Champions League qualification has done that. Manchester City must now be taken even more seriously by the game’s superstars—and by the club’s rivals in this summer’s transfer market.

Few, if any, of the bluebloods of Europe have until this moment been that interested in joining City’s nouveau ultra-rich, no matter what they were paying in weekly wages, because the club did not possess the glamour or the greatness to warrant their presence, especially as they had yet to reach the holy ground of Europe's elite.

that third place finish in the Premier League demands that the perception of City must change and that change will come at a huge cost not only to them but to their rivals.

Manager Mancini, having visited his club’s owners in Abu Dhabi recently, has a new sack full of cash and while it has been made clear the number of newcomers will not be the same as in the first two years of the Arab regime, the plan is for quality of the next purchases to rise.

What will also rise will be prices. City, in their initial blast under Abu Dhabi United’s ownership, spent $500M and just like Roman Abramovich and Chelsea before them, inflated prices.

That was one reason that Sir Alex Ferguson ducked out of major trading last year: he and Manchester United refused to compete in a market that was being blown out of proportion by the club he calls the noisy neighbours.

Ferguson now admits he can't duck it any longer. He needs to buy, and buy big. As do Chelsea and Arsenal.Liverpool have new American money and it is burning a hole in Kenny Dalglish's pocket.

All the top clubs in England, and especially those in the Champions League, are working on bolstering their squads and with City now in the Champions League and with only a finite number of player targets to aim at, it is going to get very expensive.

Some of the biggest and best remain for now beyond City’s grasp : Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, will not help to keep the Blue Moon rising, nor will Andrea Pirlo or Xavi or Edinso Cavani, Serie A’s new scoring sensation at Napoli .

But they remain on the list of targets, just in case money does buy their love.

Kaka, however, having already been pursued before he left Milan for Real Madrid, is a definite maybe and so, too, are the likes of Sergio Aguero, the Argentinian striker who has already told Athletico Madrid he is out of there this summer.

Bolton’s Gary Cahill, Chilean winger Alexis Sanchez and Ashley Young are all on the radar and what will be worrying Mancini’s managerial rivals, such as Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Arsene Wenger, the next Chelsea manager, Dalglish and a host of others across the continent is that City’s interest will create a price hike that will blow most competitors away.

Wary of UEFA's tough financial rules, the club's hierarchy are working on a much more cautious transfer policy and so there will be a drastic trimming of the current squad.

Chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak insists or the forthcoming transfer moves: "It won't be like last summer, or the summer before. What you will see this year is strengthening the squad in areas that we feel require more depth.”

Mancini’s spending has had a lot of wisdom to it for he has targeted players under the age of 25, preferably English, but principally players who can grow together and win together, proving that with the FA Cup triumph that ended 35 years of hurt.

But that trophy, no matter that it represents a seminal success for City's supporters given the decades of failure they have suffered through, is all but a bauble by comparison to what Mancini has been charged with: to turn the club into the new rulers of the Premier and Champions League.

So he and City have to move on and bring in even greater quality if they are to rival United, Barcelona, or any of the other giants of Europe.

That will cost money. It has already cost a lot of it. It will cost more still.

In the process of furthering their ambitions, City will cost their rivals more, and Mancini will be right there in the middle of it all—upping the ante, increasing the prices, using a power that is unprecedented.

He will lose some of his targets to others, because City remain newcomers without the romance or history of success of, for example, United, but the players who do move elsewhere will have used the Italian's interest to increase their wages.

The clubs they are leaving will demand more because of the money Mancini would have paid. Truly, he will be the most dangerous man in Europe.