Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano has promised that the champions will adhere to the transfer policy that saw them drop their interest in £105million-rated Declan Rice.
Soriano, speaking at the announcement of a new sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency giants OKX, insisted that the Blues will not be held to ransom in their efforts to strengthen Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering squad. He admitted that City have had to spend big in the past to get to the summit of European football.
But at the end of a week when the Blues pulled out of the battle with Arsenal to sign Rice after West Ham rejected their £90 million bid for the England midfielder, the Etihad chief outlined how he now goes about his business.
Soriano said: "If you look at what we did at the start of this project, there was a need for a lot of changes and investment - but not anymore. If you look at what we have done in the last five years, our level of investment in new players is well thought out.
"We are not the top net-spenders of last year or the last three or five years. We have a platform where we know what to do and we can do it with time and intelligence. When we don't like a deal, we walk away and we don't panic."
City’s three-year deal with OKX will see the company’s name featured on the sleeve of kits worn by the club’s men’s and women’s team as well as training kit. City have become the first Premier League club to take their annual revenues through the £700m barrier.
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They banked just under £300m in prize money for winning the Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup. And with bitter rivals Manchester United seeing their gross debts rise to £725m, Soriano aimed a thinly-veiled dig at clubs who stumble from one crisis to the next.
United have burned through five managers and more than £1.4billion in the transfer market in the decade since Sir Alex Ferguson retired. And Soriano said: "How many coaches did we have in the last 10 years? Two - Manuel Pellegrini and Pep Guardiola. How many football directors? One - Txiki Begiristian.
"Part of the success is to be consistent and resilient and not panicking when we lose. I've seen at City when going to breakfast the morning after the games we have lost and it’s like a funeral and people are really p***ed off.
"That's when you have to show resilience but also intelligence to think ‘today is not the day to make decisions.’ This is part of the reason why we have been successful in the last decade."
Soriano added: "Other people take decisions based on emotions. We take conscious decisions and we take time to think about it. A little joke inside the group is we say ‘no decisions on Mondays’ because you might be affected by the result at the weekend.
"We can lose games - significant games - and we say we can be very sad and angry for 24 hours. But in hour 25 we have to come back and think about the next game."
