Real winners have always spent big so LAY OFF CITY

WITHIN minutes of Manchester City crushing Watford 6-0 to win the FA Cup and clinch a historic domestic Treble, the inevitable backlash began.

City were accused of ruining football with their exorbitant spending and reducing English football’s showpiece event to a farce, an embarrassingly one-sided non-event.

Those going in two-footed on City argued the £1billion-plus Sheikh Mansour has pumped in over the past 11 years has skewed the football landscape to such an extent it has ruined competitions such as the

FA Cup and made a mockery of the

English game.

Yet the reality is clubs have always spent big to be successful, from the

‘Bank of England’ tag attached to Arsenal in the 1920s and 30s and Sunderland in the 40s and 50s, to Sir Jack Walker bankrolling Blackburn’s solitary Premier League title triumph of 1995.

Manchester United spent heavily, particularly in the 2000s, to maintain their domestic dominance under Sir Alex Ferguson.

As did Chelsea, funded by Roman Abramovich’s billions, his personal fortune delivering their first league title for 50 years under Jose Mourinho.

In short, clubs lavishing millions on players is nothing new, yet City find themselves being admonished for Saturday’s cakewalk at Wembley, as if Watford’s own shortcomings did not contribute to the biggest margin of victory in an FA Cup final for 116 years. It’s easy for clubs with the financial muscle to spend big, it’s another thing entirely to spend that money smartly.

Take Bernardo Silva (above), City’s Player of the Season, who cost £43million from Monaco, yet has proved to be twice the player Paul Pogba (below) is, who cost Manchester United a club record £89m.

The bottom line is that money can only take a team so far. Economic superiority has to be supplemented by shrewd judgment in the transfer market, along with the best coaching, which Pep Guardiola has showed at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and now in Manchester.

City are at the centre of a UEFA investigation into allegations they contravened Financial Fair Play rules by artificially inflating the value of multimillion-pound sponsorship deals.

If found guilty, they face expulsion from the Champions League for one season. And rightly so.

But until City are hit with any sanction, it is surely worth marvelling at the majesty of their play and the extraordinary standard they have set this season and last, taking English football to a new level.

They can be beaten. Just ask Lyon, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Leicester, Newcastle and Tottenham, who all won against them this season. Or Shakhtar Donetsk, Liverpool, Wigan, Basel and United, who did so last season.

You just need to take your chances, something Watford failed to do. No amount of financial disparity can be blamed for that.