Sunday 8 May 2016 16:43, UK
Pep Guardiola must prove he can win trophies without spending hundreds of millions of pounds on new players, according to Sunday Supplement panelist Antony Kastrinakis.
Guardiola, who will replace Manuel Pellegrini at Manchester City this summer, won three league titles with Barcelona and recently won his third Bundesliga crown with Bayern Munich.
However, he leaves Bayern without a Champions League trophy after three exits at semi-final stage and The Sun's Kastrinakis believes his transfer record should be of concern to City fans.
"If you go to Bayern pretending you are the best thing since sliced bread and you are on 17m or 18m euros a year, you have to deliver," Kastrinakis said on the Sunday Supplement. "He believes his own myth and that's a shame.
"If you look at his signing record at both clubs, but Barcelona in particular, you can see he wasted hundreds of millions and people don't realise that. On people like Zlatan Ibrahimovic - they took a 40m euros hit in one season - and others like Dmytro Chygrynskiy.
"I would like to see him go to City and not spend £200m on new players. He could easily go and say, 'I know what this team needs, it needs Lionel Messi'.
"But could he do a Claudio Ranieri? Could he go to Man City and take this bunch of players - who in August people were calling champions after winning five games in a row - and win the league?
"When he went to Bayern Munich, to a team that won the treble, his first demand in January before he took over was to buy Neymar. If you are a great manager, you don't need to spend £150m on one player.
"Oliver Kahn said this week Guardiola is blinded by his meticulousness. He always looks to come up with a special thing, and that's not always what you need in order to win.
"Pep thinks he's better than everyone else, so he has to do the better thing. In reality, he has no Plan B. It sums him up perfectly."
The Daily Mail's Martin Samuel disagreed with his fellow Sunday Supplement panelist, arguing Guardiola's style of play should be celebrated on its own merit.
"He plays a certain way and he's got great belief in that," Samuel said. "Whenever a manager starts losing, that's when people say he hasn't got a Plan B.
"Pep has a philosophy. You see a team, and it wouldn't matter if they were wearing plain white t-shirts, you could walk out and watch for 10 minutes and say, 'that is a Pep Guardiola team'.
"That's a fantastic achievement. You have a style of football that is yours and that is obviously what Man City want.
"He should be able to take City on, with their resources and ambition. If he is half the manager people think he is, he will make City competitive next season."