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Manchester City manager Josep Guardiola has brushed off debate around the club's spending insisting it is relative to ambition.
City landed Jack Grealish for £100 million from Aston Villa in the off-season and have been heavily linked with a big-money move for Tottenham's Harry Kane, leading to criticism from Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp.
In 2020, City purchased Ferran Torres from Valencia for £20m, Nathan Ake from Bournemouth for £40m and Ruben Dias from Benfica for £62m, with their total off-season transfer expenditure reaching almost £144m.
Guardiola pointed to the fact the club sold players to the region of £97m last off-season, while they have again made money selling peripheral players such as Ivan Ilic, Jack Harrison and Lukas Nmecha.
"I said last year that we couldn’t spend £100m," Guardiola told The Guardian.
"We have bought Jack Grealish because we sell for £60m, so in the end we have spent £40m. Otherwise, we cannot do it."
City's spending comes amid Paris Saint-Germain's off-season flurry of transfer activity which has seen the French powerhouse land Lionel Messi, Achraf Hakimi, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Sergio Ramos and Georginio Wijnaldum.
Chelsea have also this week completed a bumper deal for Romelu Lukaku for £97.5m from Internazionale, having previously shown strong interest in a lucrative move for Borussia Dortmund Erling Haaland.
"Each club has its own reality, its own history," Guardiola said. "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?"
Guardiola also eluded to the potential signing of Kane when he said: "I don’t know if we will sign a striker; that depends."