Garry Cook has hit back at critics of Manchester City's recruitment policy, saying they will not spend with the same 'intensity' in January.
City manager Roberto Mancini spent more than £100million in the summer market as the likes of James Milner, Mario Balotelli, Yaya Toure, David Silva and Jerome Boateng were brought to Eastlands.
The plan is to turn City into Premier League champions and kings of Europe, but at the same time questions have been raised regarding a staggering £133million wage bill.
With new UEFA rules regarding Financial Fair Play on the horizon, the plans of billionaire City owner Sheikh Mansour will also come under increasing scrutiny.
However, City chief executive Cook insists that there is a strategy, telling the Guardian: "Critics only have their own perspective.
"They're not at the football club, they haven't been part of the planning or the long-term financial strategies.
"People think we choose players from the fantasy football league but there was a clear plan for who Roberto wanted to sign.
"One of the perceptions was that we only buy foreign players, then suddenly people saw that six of the England team who finished against Switzerland were City players.
"When people see the good things we are actually doing, they seem to be enlightened."
With regards to the new rules on finance, which will see Uefa only permit a loss of 45m euros (£39.7m) over the three years between 2011 and 2014, Cook also insists City, who lost £121m in 2009/10, have plans in place.
"Clearly our intention is to comply," said Cook. "Our two-year plan was to take a budget and build a competency to compete at the highest level, not forgetting the need for succession planning in every position.
"We are pleased with how that worked and will not be signing players to the same level of intensity in the next transfer windows.
"Financial fair play is on our conscience, we talk about it at every board meeting and it's part of our long-term plan."
