Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano has defended his side's spending power and admitted there are three Premier League clubs that have "invested more money".
City booked their place in the Champions League final on Wednesday evening after beating Real Madrid 4-0 in the second-leg at the Etihad Stadium. Bernardo Silva's brace and goals from Manuel Akanji and Julian Alvarez earned a comfortable victory over the reigning champions.
It wrapped up a 5-1 aggregate win for Pep Guardiola's side, who will face Inter Milan in the final in Istanbul next month. However, City have been taunted by some fans for 'buying their success' after spending around £1billion on transfer fees since the start of the 2016/17 season.
But CEO Soriano has hit back at those suggestions. Soriano told Movistar: "Look, you only have to look at the investment in players in England in the last year, three years, five years… we are never the club spending the most on players.
"There are many other clubs investing more money than us - Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal. Saying that we’ve spent a lot of money and we won because of that is just not true."
Chelsea have coughed up £600m on transfers since Todd Boehly took over last summer. Enzo Fernandez, Wesley Fofana and Mykhalyo Mudryk are amongst the big-money moves, but they haven't been able to help the Blues to an improvement on last season, with Chelsea set inside the bottom-half.
As for United, they have the second-highest net spend over the past five seasons at around £540m. Only Chelsea have a bigger net spend than the Red Devils in that time (£654.21m), who coughed up last summer with Casemiro, Lisandro Martinez and Antony their most expensive arrivals.
Arsenal, meanwhile, sit third on that list at £485.64m. Mikel Arteta strengthened his squad with a number of high-profile signings last summer as Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus arrived, while Leandro Trossard was signed in January to bolster their Premier League title chances.
In comparison, City are all the way down in 10th for net spend over the past five years at £224.97m, below Liverpool, West Ham, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Wolves and Tottenham. However, this doesn't take into consideration Guardiola's first two transfer windows where he splashed the cash to sign Ilkay Gundogan, John Stones and Leroy Sane, while Kevin De Bruyne and Raheem Sterling were both brought in 2015.
Guardiola won't be too focused on that side of things, however, given his side booked their place in the Champions League final - and boosted their chance at winning the treble. He said: "We're closer. Let me win the first two!
"In the Premier League we are close, we need one more game. And I would say when we play against our neighbours and in the final of the Champions League against an Italian team, be calm. The season is really good already with what we have done.
"Now we have to lift the trophies but we've had so much joy and fun with our people this season. We made our fans happy all around the world. They saw a good team playing. This is the biggest compliment. But we are going to try. Of course we are there. The players can think about it and visualise it. It's normal.
"We are three games away, one in each competition. We can do it. But for me it is more important after many years that we are there."
