FERRAN SORIANO In the last 10 years City has been on a journey to the top

FERRAN Soriano insists City have done ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ as the Treble winners announced a new sponsorship deal that will help them smash the British record for revenue.

- SIMON BAJKOWSKI

Pep Guardiola’s side enjoyed phenomenal success on the pitch last season, winning their fifth Premier League title in six years and adding the FA Cup and Champions League to complete a famous Treble that had only previously been achieved once in English football.

Commercially, sales last season were 80 per cent up on the previous campaign to set expectations of revenue above £700m – well above both the £627m that is the current record held by neighbours United and the £640m that United expect to have achieved this year.

However, the club still remain dogged by Premier League charges accusing them of misrepresenting their finances for almost a decade that, if proven, could be serious enough to see the Blues expelled from the league. Despite the best intentions of the current squad, there is still suspicion from outside the Etihad of how legitimate their success is.

The noise around City will not see them continuing to build on their success though, and club CEO Ferran Soriano used the launch of a bumper new shirt sleeve sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency exchange company OKX to defend the platform the club have built.

“We haven’t done anything that was out of the ordinary,” he said.

“We had a plan, we put a lot of work into it, we have a lot of talented people. We have not deviated from the plan and that's difficult," said Soriano.