Manchester City chief Ferran Soriano has explained their major spending this summer.
City spent around £120m on three first-team players, while recouping a significant amount by getting over £40m for Leroy Sane.
"I think the first thing to say is that when you look at the numbers at the end of the market they will be lower. There are less transactions being done and some of them are more prudent; there have been exchanges of players, loans and so on," Soriano said, speaking at Leaders in Sport's online forum, LeadersWeek.direct.
"But ultimately if you believe as we do that Covid is just a period of time and we have to carry on with our business then we have to carry on with our business and we believe that revenues will come back and the team - especially Manchester City - is the engine of our business.
"If we don't play good football, we have no business. Our whole business is built on that so we can't negate or avoid that and we have to take some risks. We believe that the risks we are taking are very well measured.
"You have to look at the net spend, we sold Leroy Sane to Bayern Munich for €49m and that got lost, that money needed to be reinvested and we bought Ferran Torres, a similar player, for €23m so we sold for 49 and invested for 23.
"Sometimes these things are out of context but remember we need to continue playing good football and if we need a central defender we need a central defender. Otamendi has done so well for us but because of his age and other things the best thing to do is to switch him for a younger player. That has to be done."
