Pep Guardiola

No he did not.

Ferguson broke the transfer record for several players including Keane, Rooney, Ferdinand, Cole, Ince, and others and was regularly the biggest spending manager in the PL and Man U consistently had the most expensive squad by some distance compared with all the other PL clubs.

When Guardiola went to Man City he was always playing catch up so, of course he had to buy a lot of players, but there are very few players that he bought that we couldn’t have afforded, and I can’t remember Guardiola breaking any transfer records.

Fine. But that’s nowhere near the point I was responding to.

Unless you’re not taking inflation into consideration, Man U had a more expensive squad.

That’s not even remotely accurate though mate.

How many times has Guardiola broken the transfer record in the PL, compared to Ferguson?
Ferguson used to buy squad players for more than our most expensive signing and built the most expensive squad in the PL.

Guardiola might have spent more money in a shorter space of time, and squads back then were a lot smaller, but the squad he has assembled at Man City doesn’t have any record signings in it.

Fergie won the CWC for Aberdeen and Mourinhio won the CL and UEFA cup with Porto. Cant deny these two managers them trophies. Both major achievements anyway you dress them up.

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I’m not taking anything from either manager for winning with lower level clubs, but as Guardiola hasn’t managed at that level it’s difficult to tell if he could replicate what they did.
But my point is that to call the most successful manager in Europe and who, unlike Mourinho, plays great football, is a bit unfair.

You did state in Fergies case he had only won big trophies in one country. Thats not really true as Winning the title in Scotland against the two big spenders proved his worth for United to purchase him.
Mourinhio winning the 2 european trophies with much lesser squads than Peps much superior squad puts a blank in that column for him so far.

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I think Jose’s treble winning season with Inter is one of the more impressive achievements from a manager over the last decade or so.

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Unless your counting over Ferguson’s entire reign, no they didn’t.

Erm, you speak no lie but it doesn’t prove a point. City haven’t been breaking records but have gone through seasons(between summer and winter windows) where they paid big time money for multiple players.

Yeah imagine us paying a 100 million on 2 full backs. Come on now your getting as creative as their accountants here.

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ROFL. :joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy:

I didn’t say he hadn’t spent but he was playing catch up with already established clubs like Chelsea and Man U.
As for spending 100m on two FB’s, it’s true but Man City had already won the PL title without them and they just pushed them to the next level.
But I certainly wouldn’t describe either FB as world class and a lot of other clubs, including us, could have afforded to buy them.

What Guardiola has done is the opposite of what Mourinho had done at Man U.
Guardiola has bought players in to work in a system even if those players aren’t necessarily world class

Man U have bought world class players, in several positions, but there is no plan or structure to their transfer windows and Mourinho failed to build a team, rather than accumulate a lot of very expensive players that he couldn’t control.

He wasnt playing catch up with united though was he. His team before the reinforcements was better than them.
The 100 million he spent on them full backs was just luxury money he could throw at them. No other team in England could have justified 50 million on Kyle Walker could they.
Imagine the meltdown on here if we would have bid that for him.

To be fair it’s hard to justify the 90m we spent on Mustafi, Xhaka and Perez. :wink:

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This is the only thing I can defend City on. City spend a lot of money but they sign a lot of really good players for good sums of money.

City have never signed a player that wasn’t obtainable by other clubs, us included.

United spent roughly £300m on Pogba (£100m), Lukaku (£70-90m), Matic (£40m), Lindelof (£35m), Fred (£50m).

City brought in Laporte (Ā£57m), Ederson (Ā£35m), B. Silva (Ā£43m), Walker (Ā£45m), Mendy (Ā£50m), Sane (Ā£37m) and Stones (Ā£47.5m) over the course of Guardiola reign for roughly the same kind of money.

So when United fans complain about the vast sums of money City have spent, they’ve spent comparable amounts over the course of Pep’s reign. There’s just a huge disparity in the quality of player that has been signed.

For years United have complained about the lack of quality they have at full back but they spent Ā£70-90m on a donkey of a striker when that could have gotten them two high quality full backs. They complained about the quality of their central midfield options but they’ve spent Ā£200m on Pogba, Fred and Matic and they simply do not compliment each other or gel in any way, shape or form.

Other teams have pissed away hundreds of millions of pounds and they only have themselves to blame. City signed a world class keeper for half the price Chelsea did. The examples are endless.

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You are speaking as if he had a shit team in his hand. Players like Aguero, Silva, Kompany, Sterling, De Bruyne were already there and that set of players already matched or exceeded whatever Chelsea & United have to offer.

And the season he was catching up, Leicester won the title, so was he also catching up with Leicester?

So sorry if I don’t buy the catch up bullshit.

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I actually do like him but if you have the best squad in the world and you can’t get past Spurs in CL, you are a fraud.