‘Who cares?’, ‘we should quickly move on from that net spend thing!’ – Man City fans react as club chief breaks silence on Declan Rice transfer decision

Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano has explained why his side lost out on signing Declan Rice to Arsenal.

Arsenal submitted a club-record transfer offer of £100million, plus an additional £5million in add-ons, for Rice on Tuesday evening.

That bid resulted in City pulling out of the race for the England international after previously seeing a £90million bid turned down by the Hammers.

The Gunners’ offer proposed the guaranteed portion of the fee be paid over the course of four years whilst David Moyes’ side ideally wants the money paid in two instalments by the start of 2025.

But the issue has been described as minor and both teams now working towards reaching an agreement rather than bargaining over the price.

Now, Soriano has opened up on the Citizens’ thinking behind pulling out of the race to sign the 24-year-old. Speaking at the announcement of a new sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency giants OKX, via the Mirror, he 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 have shown in the past that they aren’t afraid to miss out on targets to Premier League rivals if they deem the fee too exorbitant, such as when Liverpool beat Pep Guardiola and Co to the signing of Virgil van Dijk back in January 2018. Soriano spoke about this kind of continuity at the Etihad Stadium being key to the recent success of the treble winners.

“How many coaches did we have in the last 10 years? Two – Manuel Pellegrini and Pep Guardiola”, he added.” “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 (expletive) 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.”

These Ferran Soriano’s comments were shared on Twitter by City Xtra and it attracted plenty of attention from the club’s supporters.

@ManCityNuxmbers: “We are done in the market if this is what he is saying.”

@Rodri_16ball: “We don’t invest much because our CEO cares about net spending.”

@registarodri: “who cares? just sign Gvardiol a winger and a midfielder”

@Dreckel_: “Sign someone Fgs”

@CityCookingOil1: “Ferran, we should quickly move on from that net spend thing! Even if we don’t spend they won’t say good things about us! So, splash the money if needed! Be ruthless!”

@mcfcCs: “idk why the city executives are so obsessed with trying to create this image of a low/smart spending club. It’s not working, so go back to being the highest spenders and making rivals cry even more..”

@HaaIandEra: “Why are they so hell bent on proving that they don’t spend much and roaring about net spending. In every interview they talk about this trash like who tf cares ?? We will always be known as oil Money club”

@VannMichelo: “I’m sick of seeing fans try to bully the club into signings as if they’re playing football manager. They got us here, they have a plan to continue that. The least you could do as fans is support the mgmt. At this stage y’all ought to have 95% confidence in our mgmt..”