Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has defended City's necessary spending in the transfer window, as the Manchester club broke the £200m barrier with the world-record defensive signing of Benjamin Mendy.

Going to keep going up

Guardiola has been looking to refresh his side after a generally disappointing first season at the Etihad Stadium, and the coach has certainly not been afraid to flex the club's financial muscles in the window so far.

It all began back in May with the £43m signing of Bernardo Silva and it snowballed from there with; Ederson, Kyle Walker, Danilo and Mendy all joining The Citizens over the past weeks and months.

The signing of Mendy was Guardiola's third full-back signing in quick succession which took the spending on full-backs to £120m alone, but ahead of their friendly clash with Real Madrid Guardiola defended his spending stating that other clubs will be spending more as the window goes on.

"Manchester City didn't invest in full backs in the last six-seven years," Guardiola told his pre-match press conference. "We decided we had to make the squad younger and we tried to keep the best full backs."

"All the clubs spend a lot of money," the Catalan stated. "Not just us."

"You will see until the 31st (of August), the amount of transfers coming," the 46-year-old added. "So we will see 70, 80, 90, 100 (million) - more than that. Maybe one day it will stop."

Not out of this race

Despite breaking the £200m mark it doesn't seem that City will be stopping there, as it is believed that City are still possibly in the market for a forward having been linked with the likes of Alexis Sánchez.

It was rumoured on Tuesday that Thursday's opponents had broken the world-record transfer, with it been reported that Madrid had their £161m bid for Monaco's Kylian Mbappé which the French side have since denied.

City have also been linked with making a possible move for the Frenchman, and Guardiola stated that "anything can happen" in terms of City making a possible move.

"The player is still at Monaco - still on that team," he said on the subject of Mbappé. "Anything can happen - we are still looking at a lot of other players, but he is still on that team."

"Madrid doesn't have more than Manchester City has," the coach stated. "Players are always important and we always try to get the best players possible."

"Abu Dhabi came in and they invested in the team and over the past few years we've climbed to the top," Guardiola concluded. "We've come a long way but in order to get to the level of Barcelona and Real Madrid we just need time."

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Danial  Kennedy
Award-winning sports journalism graduate. Currently studying a PR Masters at the University of Sunderland. Writing for VAVEL since August 2014. Twitter - @ddkjournalism.