Not a fair comparison imho, we've just had to replace certain players (a few at that), in the squad and not make huge overhaul of them, City in Pep first season had about 13-14 players out of their 26-28 man squad at or over the age of 30, thus they needed that overhaul and hence the spending, they shot themselves in the foot not signing a fullback and thus when they let go of their each club was licking their fingers as they knew City was desperate. City have a spent a lot even before Pep, but it seems the signing under Pep reign seem to be quite promising.
Still, City could have bought Umtiti instead of Stones, for half the price. They could have kept Maffeo instead of splashing on Walker, etc.
There is also more clever options than splashing money. It is just to say that everything isn't doom and gloom if you can't spend 150M net every summer, as City does - it is possible to be more clever than that.
That said, they probably will get Sanchez on a free, which is an amazing piece of business, if it happens, so they sure have some clever deals as well.
No reason that Bernardo Silva wouldn't cost 80-100M instead of 50M - that takes good negotiation-skills, and we should remember that (every promising players prices isn't automatically +100M just because of the Neymar-deal).
