Manchester City will not be held ransom by clubs during summer transfer window, insists Pep Guardiola

Pep Guardiola has insisted that Manchester City will not give in to the demands of clubs during the upcoming summer transfer market.

The Premier League champions are expected to be active during the next transfer window, having identified a number of positions within their first-team playing squad that require investment in order to maintain the high standards set by Pep Guardiola and his staff.

One of the primary positions for City and their transfer-relevant staff to focus on is left-back, especially after the mainstay in the position – Portuguese international Joao Cancelo – joined Bayern Munich on a six-month loan including an option to buy.

However, with transfer fees continuously rising over the summer transfer markets in recent years, there may be a concern for City that some of their main targets in a number of positions could command much higher values when the window reopens later this year.

Speaking during a recent pre-match press conference, Pep Guardiola has insisted that Manchester City will have no problem in walking away from negotiations with clubs, should their valuation of players not match up fairly with the fees being demanded.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the (summer) transfer window, I can imagine but I don’t know. What’s important is that we make good decisions, take the right players that you want to buy, and that they get involved in the whole group, the dynamic that we have built in these many years,” Pep Guardiola said.

“This is the intention that we always have. About the prices? I don’t know what’s going to happen. I think they will be more expensive than usual but I don’t know.”

The Manchester City boss continued, “We have done it (walked away from transfer negotiations) many times recently in the last years. When the club decides a player is too much, we don’t take them. I could explain three, four or five cases.

“I have in memory four or five players because the club wanted to negotiate it (their price) – fair enough, I’m not saying the opposite, and we decided no, it is too much and we didn’t do it.”

Manchester City were very quiet during the most recent window, with the large majority of their business completed during the previous summer market, when the clubs secured the services of the likes of Erling Haaland, Kalvin Phillips, and Manuel Akanji.

There is a common feeling held by those within the organisation that business in the winter window is not best practice, largely due to the high transfer fees commanded by the level of players that Manchester City will most likely be looking for.

As such, even despite the loss of Joao Cancelo to Bayern Munich, City stuck true to their wide, and retained the likes of Nathan Ake, Sergio Gomez, and Aymeric Laporte as their left-back options for the remainder of the season, as opposed to signing an immediate replacement.