As Manchester City lift the Premier League title, has Pep Guardiola decided to end his big-spending days?

A superb Sunday could double up as statistics Sunday for Manchester City.

They will be presented with the Premier League trophy. Beat Huddersfield and they will overhaul Chelsea’s records of 30 wins and 95 points in a top-flight season.

Do so while scoring at least twice? The previous Premier League best of 103 will need erasing from the history books as well. There could be plenty of factual proof of their excellence.

And yet other numbers have continued to dog City. Pep Guardiola has forked out almost £450 million in transfer fees alone. City have been the biggest spenders in each of his two seasons in England.

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Jose Mourinho and his acolytes like to highlight that expenditure, whether by calling his own £300 million outlay “not enough” or saying “Manchester City buy the full-backs for the price of the strikers.”

The implication is that City have bought success, that they have blown everyone else out of the market and that the sport has been distorted.

It ignores the reality that City did not have the biggest wage bill in the division last season, or that Paul Pogba and Romelu Lukaku cost more than any individual at the Etihad Stadium, but it is undeniable that Guardiola has spent a lot.

Joking

He said on Sunday he would spend a lot more – “maybe £1 billion or something” – but he was joking. This summer’s transfer bill should be the smallest of his time in England.

All of which could mean Guardiola’s critics require another argument next season. He will be starting from a high base, of a record-breaking team with hugely accomplished individuals.

But there is the very real possibility that City will not be the biggest spenders. Certainly after 12 first-team signings in two years, the flood of arrivals will slow to a trickle.

“Maybe two; no more,” said Guardiola at the weekend. The numbers may suggest otherwise, but he is no devotee of chequebook management. He was not a byword for a revolving-door recruitment policy at either Barcelona or Bayern Munich.

A team is being built to last at City, a largely youthful group that can be improved, Raheem Sterling-style, by coaching after the expensive overhaul.

But accelerated spending was a theme with the need to replace four ageing full-backs and with the reality that some of the players bequeathed by Manuel Pellegrini – Joe Hart, Eliaquim Mangala, Jesus Navas, Kelechi Iheanacho, Wilfried Bony – were a stylistic mismatch for a Guardiola side.

Then the £57 million buy of Aymeric Laporte, in effect a summer signing who joined in January, was brought forward. But with Vincent Kompany’s 2018 renaissance and Guardiola’s insistence John Stones is not going anywhere, another centre-back is not required.

Nor, with the way Fabian Delph deputised for Benjamin Mendy, is a second specialist left-back.

If continuity replaces change, there should only be two exceptions, the two planned arrivals. Another holding midfielder is being targeted, with Yaya Toure set to be released and Fernandinho turning 33 on Friday.

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Whether the eventual addition is Napoli’s Jorginho, Shakhtar Donetsk’s Fred, Borussia Dortmund’s Julian Weigl or Nice’s Jean Michael Seri, the precedents in City’s spending suggests he could cost between £50 and £60 million. This, it seems, is the new norm.

And there will be another attacker. Guardiola’s past interest in Alexis Sanchez and Riyad Mahrez shows he wants a fifth forward – a sixth, if the versatile Bernardo Silva is included – and preferably one adaptable enough to operate in at least two of the front three positions.

Leicester rather optimistically put a £95 million price on Mahrez. City may have three of the four costliest defenders in history but, as Guardiola said in January, they cannot always be held to ransom.

“Maybe it will happen in the future but so far we have not spent £100 million on one player, or £90 million or £80 million,” he stated. “We cannot pay that right now.”

They could not then. But if the budget has to be divided fewer ways, they can concentrate their resources on two targets and a genuine game-changer – a Kylian Mbappe or an Eden Hazard – becomes available and attainable, that may change.

Perhaps then they could adopt the Mourinho model of making a record-breaking, flagship signing each summer.

Yet if that player does not materialise, the superstar who does not meet Guardiola’s specific requirements – as, in their prime, attacking talents of the calibre of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Ronaldinho did not – and the additions are not headline acts and the new forward is essentially an understudy or an up-and-coming player like Leverkusen’s Leon Bailey, then City may have to be rebranded by their critics.

A summer outlay of £100 million would scarcely make them paupers, but they might not be making the biggest signings, or bringing in the biggest names, or making the most deals. And then the most eye-catching figures will definitely be the sort Guardiola’s charges are busy compiling: goals, points, wins, passes, and every other statistical sign of dominance.