The fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is maturing fast and the target year 2020 is around the corner. However, the realistic backhaul network may not be ready for 5G arrival as it is likely to converge to 5G requirements at a slower pace than the radio counterpart. In this work, we develop a method that identifies pertinent backhaul upgrade stages that are ranked based on their associated cost. First, the User-centric- backhaul (UCB) scheme is employed to reveal the bottlenecks of the incumbent backhaul network, as perceived by users and holistic network. A multi- hop hybrid backhaul modelling framework is then employed to quantify possible rectifications that would deliver the highest improvement at the lowest cost. These are implemented and the results are verified following another usage of UCB. A case study is presented that demonstrates the strength of this method in enabling an effective and cost efficient evolution road map towards the 5G backhaul.