Sachin Nakrani linked this piece and emphasised this particular stat:
Yeah, Guardiola, a bonafide football genius.
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Gareth Roberts (TAW) also posted the same thing.
I liked this quote from the Ken Early article:
Last week it was reported that City have leapfrogged apparently much-better-supported teams like Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern to become the worldâs top-earning football club. The news was a reminder that there is one thing City are good at making you feel, and that is the helplessness that comes from knowing that you live in a world where the richest will always get their way, and if you donât like it they will spend ÂŁ30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue you for the next 10 years, as someone once said. In that sense at least, City have captured the spirit of the age.
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Paraphrasing your post:
In doing so this âcaptureâ has destroyed the spirit of the game.
Football is fucked, and these plaything sports washed clubs, aided and abetted by crooked authorities have royally fucked it.
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Itâs shameful that the media doesnât hammer them for their financial transgressions. All Lineker and co want to talk about is a nice passage of play, but it is irrelevant compared to how Man City have got to where they are.
It is myopic in the extreme to not see that, and talk about it. It is the ONLY Man City story, but it is being overlooked.
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Might just be me⌠but I find their football devoid of excitementâŚ!
Guardiolaâs football has always been boring. He transformed Barca from a genuinely exciting football team to watch under Rijkaard, into this tiki-taka shit they then became. Same for Bayern, who were a fantastic side under Heynckes before he came and took the sting out of them.
The best thing one can say about him at Man Cheaty is that he respects the minimal targets set by his masters, given the enormous financial advantage he has been given. But the football he preaches is horribly boring to be fair. The only excitement one can get when watching them is individual moments of inspiration, provided by all these expensive world-class players on the pitch.
Thatâs it in a nutshell, isnât it⌠they have captured the spirit of the age indeed, and by the same token, the spirit of the game.
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Hopefully they wonât be invited into the inevitable superleague next time.
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Zoran is not impressed with this. 
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All I can say is that I hope that JuriÄâs Torino qualify for CL, bring some of that death metal approach of his and grind Man City down into submission over two legs! 
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Iâm fine with all opinions. 
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A bit offtopicâŚ:
I remember well his Barca days and famous tiki taka. Every bloody âexpertâ here (where I live) was orgasming when commentating. Even occasional football friends started with this shite how Barca plays, are invincible, the Barca way yadayada. Me and couple of my football geeks found it incredible boring as youâve said. Buuuut no this Barca obsession was everywhere even in bloody shops with schools stuff with notebooks, pens, crayons, name it. Up until then I was impartial to Barca but come onâŚ
Luckily same crap didnât happen with Bayern and itâs not happening with Cheaty as well.
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I know mate. Just having a laugh. 
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From your mouth toâŚ
Never knew what was so exciting watching Xavi and Iniesta pass the ball to each other 20 times without getting any closer to the goal.
Boring as hell football I called it, without Messi they would have won nothing.
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Yeah⌠56355 passes in couple of minutes and through ball to Pedro or Messi.
I know I know Itâs far from being that simple and Iâm being unfair to complex tactics and movements but it really wasnât pleasant for viewing if you werenât Barca fan.
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come on guys,
lets not prentend that we didnt all lap up Barcaâs style of play, at some point
specially when they wiped the floor with Man Utd in the champs league final in 2011.
cos i certainly didnt find that boring
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Guilty.
I could watch Xavi play football all day. To me, there have been very few players across the entire history, even before 1992, that would basically not concede possession, ever. Xavi was one.
I personally never gave Guardiola any credit for it. The ground work had been done beforehand particularly by those like Cruyff that were instrumental in setting up La Masia.
I still donât to be honest.
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I didnât. It was obviously efficient, but I found it boring, and much preferred Rijkaardâs Barca team for instance.
What I always admired about Barca though is the way they were developing young players at La Masia, and then let them find a way into the first team. Every season, at least one or two youngsters would establish themselves in the first team, and that was great to be honest. When they won the CL in 2011, they had seven or eight homegrown players in the team, all formed at La Masia.
This kind of continuity is obviously something our club try to achieve as well these days. It was admirable imo.
But that has not much to do with Guardiola. It was their perennial philosophy for decades, and it kept them in a brilliant state, until they decided that they preferred to take big Arabian money instead of continuing to work with their youngsters.
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The best of their age (and wider) are always under the biggest microscope.
Itâs just how it goes.