THIS column was basically written, in another form, on Tuesday.

A forensic takedown of Pep Guardiola’s latest, vain attempt to claim that Manchester City aren’t among the biggest spenders in English (for that read, ‘world’) soccer.

TL;DR: Pep, once again, talked only about net spending over the past five years, ignoring all the still important, first choice players City bought outside that timeframe.

He also conveniently overlooked the fact that only crazy Chelsea’s current squad cost more to assemble than his.

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What’s more, he seems to have missed the table showing that City have run up the fourth highest debt in the Premier League era, behind only – yep – Chelsea and, get this!!!, Aston Villa and Everton.

Then I read what else Guardiola said in his media conference.

Scrap that column.

So Pep’s a petty, bald man in his 50s who vigorously defends his own club.

Mirror, meet Kenny.

Some things matter much more than bickering over football finances.

Guardiola has talked before about his wish for independence for his native Catalonia.

However, his recent remarks about issues in the wider world should resonate with all decent human beings.

“Never, ever in the history of humanity have we had the info in front of our eyes, watching more clearly than now – genocide in Palestine, what happened in Ukraine, what happened in Russia, what happened........

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