As Manchester City confirmed the transfer of Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund in a statement on Tuesday, the 21-year-old Norwegian striker became the latest big investment City made for their manager Pep Guardiola.

City paid 60 million euros (about $63.4 million) to activate the release clause in Haaland's contract with Dortmund, according to The Athletic, instead of landing him at the market price of 150 million euros (about $158.4 million), which is valued by German football site Transfermarkt.com.

Before Haaland, City already spent over 1.13 billion euros (about $1.19 billion) to acquire 41 players for Guardiola, who took over from the 2016-17 season. 12 of these players cost the club over 50 million euros (about $52.8 million) each to join, led by Jack Grealish who was introduced with 117.5 million euros (about $124 million) from Aston Villa.

Guardiola turned these investments into 10 championship trophies, including three Premier League titles and one FA Cup. Considering the strong performance of Liverpool as the major challenger in Premier League in recent years, City have been one of the dominant clubs in the domestic league.

However, City and their owner Sheikh Mansour are not spending like this for Guardiola to dominate the domestic league – they had already won two Premier League titles before he came. What the club has been after is the UEFA Champions League trophy but the best City could do under Guardiola was runner-up in the 2020-21 season.

More importantly, the teams that beat City in the Champions League often spent much less than they did. For example, Real Madrid, who knocked City with an epic comeback win in the second-leg game of the semifinals this season, only invested 31 million euros in transfers this season.

Guardiola has carved City into a team that has distinctive features of his. They love to have everything under control on the field and seem unstoppable against most teams. However, when City's opponents don't play as Guardiola have expected, or his plan fails to work, City grow reckless and panic, like they did against Real on May 4.

Haaland may be City's solution to their long-term problem. Despite his 1.94-meter height, he has incredible speed that enabled him to finish a 60 meters dash in 6.64 seconds in the Champions League game against Paris Saint-Germain two years ago. With his combination of size, power and speed, Haaland is able to break the opponents' defensive line on his own, especially in counter strike. Today's City lack such a quality in their players.