How Man City's net spend breaks down...

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said he was "a little bit grumpy" when asked about the club's January transfer business.

Rather than concentrate on City being the biggest spenders for the second consecutive winter window, he preferred to focus on net spend.

Figures from Footballtransfers.com show City are sixth, not seventh as Guardiola said, with a net spend of £324.7m.

But let's be fair to Guardiola - he is effectively correct.

Nottingham Forest (£323m) pretty much have the same net spend despite being in the Championship for the first season of the calculation, but is it as straightforward as this for City?

There are two ways of looking at things.

Yes, City are not the biggest net spenders, but the data also shows they have spent the second most on players over this period.

Chelsea have spent the most (£1.57bn) to try to catch up with the likes of City. They have sold the most, too, with £862m worth of talent leaving Stamford Bridge.

Guardiola comes second on both: £962.3m spent with £637.6m brought in from sales.

This underlines how City have been incredibly adept at bringing through players from their academy and selling them for high transfer fees. In fact, about £280m has been recouped in this way in the last five years.

Cole Palmer moved to Chelsea for £40.9m, James McAtee was signed by Forest in a £22.2m deal and Taylor Harwood-Bellis switched to Southampton for £20m.

Between them they made six Premier League starts for City, yet all three appear as pure profit as club-trained players.

This is not a criticism, though. It is exactly how an academy should operate.

If a player is not to the level of the first team, or has limited opportunities, then they should be sold. Rinse and repeat the process as the years pass.

However, it could be construed as creating a slightly misleading picture in terms of net spend on the first team.

Read more from Dale about Manchester City's transfer business here