Manchester City are happy with the calculated “risks” they took during the summer transfer window, says the club’s chief executive Ferran Soriano, with the sales of Leroy Sane and Nicolas Otamendi allowing funds to be invested elsewhere.
The Blues boast the financial muscle to invest heavily at any given opportunity, and they were expected to do just that in 2020 having overcome accusations of flouting Financial Fair Play rules and seen obvious gaps open up in their squad.
In the end, Pep Guardiola did oversee business that included a club-record deal for Portuguese centre-half Ruben Dias.
He also snapped up Nathan Ake and Ferran Torres, but some of the money splashed out on those deals was offset by moves to Bayern Munich and Benfica for Sane and Otamendi.
With the coronavirus pandemic forcing even the biggest of clubs to rein in their spending, Soriano believes City navigated a tricky market well and ticked important boxes despite not welcoming a flurry of fresh faces onto their books.
He said at the Leaders in Sport forum of the Blues’ business: “I think the first thing to say is that when you look at the numbers at the end of the market they will be lower. There are less transactions being done and some of them are more prudent; there have been exchanges of players, loans and so on.
“But ultimately if you believe as we do that Covid is just a period of time and we have to carry on with our business, then we have to carry on with our business and we believe that revenues will come back and the team - especially Manchester City - is the engine of our business.
“If we don't play good football, we have no business. Our whole business is built on that so we can't negate or avoid that and we have to take some risks. We believe that the risks we are taking are very well measured.
“You have to look at the net spend, we sold Leroy Sane to Bayern Munich for €49m (£44m/$58m) and that got lost, that money needed to be reinvested and we bought Ferran Torres, a similar player, for €23m (£21m/$27m) so we sold for 49 and invested for 23.
“Sometimes these things are out of context but remember we need to continue playing good football and if we need a central defender we need a central defender. Otamendi has done so well for us but because of his age and other things the best thing to do is to switch him for a younger player. That has to be done.”
City are in the process of easing new additions into their plans and will return to Premier League action after the international break with a home date against Arsenal on October 17.