🔴 EOTK Insider Opinion: Guardiola's finger-pointing is a deflection from the club's worrying financial activity 💰

Will anyone stand up in opposition to Manchester City's financial gymnastics?

Pep Guardiola decided to shake things up a bit when it came to being questioned over Manchester City’s recent spending habits, apparently deflecting his side’s business with a walk down history lane.

Liverpool have been previously brought up, with our big money moves for Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker referenced, though the manager thought it wise to instead nod to former Premier League-winners Manchester United and Arsenal.

“We spend because we can do it, we don't spend when we cannot do it,” the 50-year-old spoke in a pre-match presser.

“At the end we have to present the balance and say this is what we are and what we have and what we can do.”

“Before years ago United and Arsenal win a lot of titles because they spend more money than the other clubs, do you remember that?

“In the end Man City couldn't do it because they didn't have the owners they do now. In Italy arrives Berlusconi and after Pirelli with Inter and they spend a lot of money.”

Come on, Pep.

“Each club has its own reality, its own history,” Guardiola added.

“And every owner of every club decides how he wants to live.

“Our owners do not want to benefit, they want to reinvest in the team.

“There is Chelsea with [Roman] Abramovich and our club with Sheikh Mansour. They want to be in this world, they want to be buying into football. What is the problem?

“I had the best player I’ve ever seen in my life – Lionel Messi – but we won two Champions League at Barcelona with seven players who came from the academy.

“The finals against [Manchester] United with seven players from the academy: zero cost.

“You can win with different squads, different players and different situations. There is no guarantee.”

The point that money isn’t necessarily the only route to success does have some legs.

After all, Leicester City won the English top-flight only five years ago; Liverpool, with significantly less backing than the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea, won the title only two years ago.

It is possible to secure major honours without the power of an oil state backing you.

However - and it’s a bloody big however - proper funding doesn’t harm your chances.

Indeed, if we are to take a look back at the last title winners over the course of the prior 10 Premier League campaigns, money appears to be the consistent theme underlying success.

Manchester City took home five of the last 10 league titles, Chelsea two, Leicester City one, Manchester United one, and Liverpool one.

Even if we were to consider Chelsea’s policy of rounding up the globe’s hottest talents only to sell them at a profit down the line as sustainable, the Cityzens have still won 50% of the available top-flight titles over the last decade.

But let’s give Pep the benefit of the doubt and assume City are in fact following FFP rules and playing it safe financially.

If everything is indeed above board, as Guardiola has suggested - why aren’t City inclined to fully cooperate with regard to an investigation into any dodgy financial happenings?

Seeing Guardiola try and draw attention away from City and cry, ‘prove it!’, feels equivalent to the mind games played by a schoolyard bully rather than a world-class manager of his calibre.

Make no mistake: Pep is an absolutely wonderful coach. There’s no questioning that he has forever changed the makeup of the sport, and for the better!

That being said, it doesn’t make him immune or separate to the critique fired in the direction of his club.

Nonetheless, the public’s frustrations shouldn’t be directed solely at the former Barcelona boss but rather the Premier League’s hierarchy too, who have contradicted their early interest in City’s financial irregularities.

“City objected to the jurisdiction of the Premier League’s arbitrators and were reluctant to hand over information required by the investigation,” Tony Evans wrote of the Premier League’s investigation for the Independent in late July.

“The nub of yesterday’s judgement, however, concerned the reporting of the case.

“The chancellor of the high court, Sir Julian Flaux, said: ‘The suggestion that press interest and speculation might disrupt the investigation or the arbitration, where both are being conducted by experienced professionals, is entirely fanciful. Likewise the suggestion that press comment and speculation following publication might damage the club’s relations with commercial partners was unconvincing’.”

“The judges noted that the Premier League backed City’s attempt to keep the matter private.

“‘That the PL supports the Club’s appeal so that both parties to the arbitration are opposed to publication is of some weight, but should lead to the Court being careful not simply to accept the parties’ wishes without scrutiny,’ the judgement said.

“Flaux backed this up with a quote from an earlier case: ‘When both sides agreed that information should be kept from the public, that was when the court had to be most vigilant’.”

More bizarre is the fact that it’s entirely possible for the Manchester-based outfit to be found guilty of wrongdoing only to emerge practically unscathed the next day in a Grand Theft Auto-esque style of justice.

According to Kieran Maguire, “If it turns out they could be subject to fines, if they exceed the Financial Fair Play limit, they could be subject to a points deduction.

“But the crazy thing is that, under the Premier League rules, you’re allowed to lose £105million over the three-year assessment period compared to €30million [under Uefa's rules].

“So we could end up in a ludicrous situation where the Premier League arbitration panel concludes that Manchester City have been in breach of the rules, they then recalculate the numbers, and it works out that City’s losses are £90m over three years. Therefore they’re under the statute in terms for which other punishment applies and they just get a finger-wagging.”

Despite Guardiola’s claims that such circumstances are simply the way things are, he’ll be just as aware as most about the lack of a level playing field.

His most recent comments regarding his club’s financial dominance isn’t a genuine defence - it’s a deflection. Nothing more, nothing less.

But perhaps the main point we’re missing here is that it’s not Liverpool or an outsider’s, like Leicester City, responsibility to prove that money isn’t the be all and end all when it comes to winning major honours.

Regardless of where Pep stands on the debate of spending money within external limits and spending money within your own limits, the globe’s divisions and bodies have a collective duty to ensure that there is at least a vaguely level playing field.

Turning a blind eye to the plumping up sponsorship deals to get away with spending a couple hundred million pounds when it’s deemed necessary is far from serving that aforementioned objective.

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