Manchester City should not be Premier League favourites just because they've spent the most money this summer, according to midfielder Kevin de Bruyne.
City have invested around £200 million in new players after finishing last season without silverware -- the first time Pep Guardiola had not won a trophy in his managerial career.
But De Bruyne believes there are six teams in the Premier League who will see themselves as favourites for the title and says City must learn to cope with the expectation put on them.
"I think we have six favourites every time so if one wins, people say the other five failed," the Belgium international said. "It's very difficult, Chelsea, Liverpool, United, Tottenham, Arsenal will say the same if they don't win. They want to win the title and we want to win the title, so it makes a good competition in the end for all of us.
"We will try to win, but I think everybody invests a lot. We invested a lot of money on six or seven players, I think United did a little bit less money for three players so maybe they spend on average more money than us.
"Other teams like Tottenham didn't really spend, but we had a lot of players released so we needed players to come otherwise we wouldn't have had the squad to play.
"There's a project going on and I think if everyone looks at the big picture everybody sees that a lot of the older players were released and we bought players who were almost all 23 or under so it's a new team, it's a new project and obviously it takes time and it takes money."
De Bruyne will be part of the City squad who travel to Bournemouth tomorrow to face a side assembled relatively cheaply by manager Eddie Howe.
However, De Bruyne doesn't believe that the difference in the cost of the squads will give any extra incentive to the Cherries, who are searching for their first point of the season.
"I don't think it matters who we play, they will try to raise their game. I don't think any of the players care much how much City are spending or how much they're paying," he said.
"If you're on the field it doesn't matter what cheque you get at the end of the month. We just have to do our duty as football players.
"Everybody prefers to play Champions League in front of 80, 90,000 people than play in front of 20,000 but this game is not a friendly so everybody knows what they have to do.
"We are professionals, we play like professionals, so you need to win the game whatever the task is and I think everybody is prepared to do that."