Pep Guardiola solved Man City injury problem internally - then Arsenal bought it

Pep Guardiola should really try and coach his way out of Manchester City's problems, like...all those times when he did

Manchester City using their unlimited budget again. Pep Guardiola runs into the slightest bit of trouble as a manager and the chequebook boss has to go and spend his way out of it - and that's why he will never be considered truly great.

Maybe it's just the horrific new normal on X but there has been far too much of this cringeworthy stuff knocking about social media since Josko Gvardiol broke his leg and City considered moving forward their interest in Crystal Palace defender Marc Guehi. It's incredibly tempting to ignore it all, but when so much fake news is blasted at your eyeballs it does feel necessary to try and find your way back to reality.

City have, obviously, spent lots and lots of money under Guardiola. Over the last five seasons they've spent about £1.2billion on new players - about £100m more than Arsenal have in the same period; they've also brought in close to £1bn in sales, which is about £600m more than Arsenal.

People can argue about spending, gross or net, all day. In fact, they do at times on the internet and what riveting stuff it must be. The reality of challenging for the Premier League title means that each club doing it has to spend whopping great sums of money on transfers and wages because everyone else is, and if they are run well then they will also sell well.

City's £175m spend last January was unprecedented for them, and one borne out of crisis with a bunch of injuries and other stars who simply couldn't do it any more. It was the start of the changing of the guard as many of the long-serving players who had brought City such extraordinary success - Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan, Ederson, Kyle Walker - came to the end of their time at the Etihad.

Another £175m was spent in summer to continue that process, and this January Antoine Semenyo will arrive for around £65m due to a release clause becoming active, and Guehi could be signed in light of injuries to Gvardiol and Ruben Dias and John Stones. City were eyeing the Crystal Palace defender on a free in summer but may have to try to pay a sizeable fee to get him early in light of their latest issues.

In January 2024, however, no new signings arrived at the Etihad. In January 2023 there was Maximo Perrone for £10m, who made one appearance. In January 2022 there was nobody. The same for January 2021. The same for January 2020. The same for January 2019. Then all the way back in 2018 you have the £57m signing of Aymeric Laporte.

Laporte, then, was the only major January signing made by Guardiola before 2025, and the centre-back arrived into a team that was about to get 100 points with attacking midfielders Fabian Delph and Alex Zinchenko playing at left-back. Zinchenko, a £1.7m signing from the Russian league back in 2016, defied the odds to force his way into the team out of position in the absence of Benjamin Mendy.

Delph and Zinchenko would continue there in the 2018/19 campaign as City became the first team in a decade to retain the Premier League title, and he was still there two years later in another title-winning team that reached the Champions League final. A year later, Zinchenko came off the bench on the final day of the season for their epic 3-2 comeback win over Aston Villa to win the league again; Laporte started that day with injuries that would sideline him for the next six months, and Fernandinho started at centre-back with Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake not fit to play.

That would be Zinchenko's last game in a City shirt before Arsenal got their chequebook out and bought him for £32m in a summer that also saw them sign Gabriel Jesus from the Blues for £45m. Those two players, who City made around £44m profit on after six years of service, were credited with helping Arsenal push City all the way for the title in the following year when Guardiola's side won the Treble.

There are many reasons why fans of City's rivals would like to forget the last decade, but airbrushing inverted full-backs, false nines and the rest out of history to make cheap points about spending and injuries isn't quite the win it might feel like.