For all of Michel Platini's tough talk, conspicuous consumption has once again been the order of the day this summer from the gilded boulevards of Monaco to the fast-changing post-industrial landscape of east Manchester. Arsène Wenger has labelled the situation "a joke".

As Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur haggle over just how much the Spanish giants will pay for Gareth Bale and in how many instalments, the likely world record fee will add further to the volume of disgruntled muttering surrounding the implementation of the Uefa president's financial fair play project.

Critics who claimed FFP will lock in the established order and increase pressure on clubs to raise ticket prices and endlessly commercialise their product now openly wonder whether it will address the problem it was created to solve.

The determination to continue to spend, spend, spend has been most obvious at newly promotedMonaco. There Claudio Ranieri has followed the template he will remember from a decade ago when Roman Abramovich arrived at Chelsea.

The Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev has arrived in the principality with pockets bulging and outgunned the competition this summer, aware that his side will not yet fall under the FFP rulebook until they qualify for European competition.

First, Ranieri brought in the Colombian James Rodríguez and the Portuguese playmaker João Moutinho for a combined £60m from Porto - the club that has become the production line of choice for ambitious benefactors with deep pockets - and then added Atlético Madrid's highly coveted striker Radamel Falcao and others to take his total spend to £130m.

Under the ownership of the Qatar Investment Authority, the Paris Saint-Germain project has continued apace with the addition of players including the Uruguayan striker Edinson Cavani and Brazilian defender Marquinhos for a total of £97.7m. At the Etihad, Manchester City have quietly spent a similar sum despite repeatedly insisting they would be more low-key in the transfer market. The amount lavished on Stevan Jovetic, Alvaro Negredo, Fernandinho and Jesús Navas would suggest otherwise.

Like PSG's £570m agreement with the Qatar Tourism Authority, Manchester City's £400m sponsorship deal with Etihad will come under scrutiny. Uefa insists that if those deals are not set at the market rate, then any difference will be discounted from the calculations. Other experts caution that setting a "market rate" will be close to impossible.

There are two questions. One is whether the continued spending will see clubs fall foul of the FFP rules as they are drafted. The other is whether the rules address the issue they were designed to.

On the first Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United believe their earning power will almost certainly see them stay within the break- even rules, while Manchester City and PSG remain confident too. Concessions negotiated by the European Clubs Association, including the ability to disregard contracts signed before 1 June for the first two years' of calculations and a string of mitigating factors, will help.

Transfer fees are less of an issue when it comes to assessing FFP break-even calculations than one might think as they can be amortised over the length of a players' contract, with wages more pertinent.

Executives at Chelsea, Liverpool and Bayern Munich have in recent months questioned whether Uefa's rules would be worth the endless reams of paper they are written on and questioned the rigour with which they might be policed.

Liverpool's managing director, Ian Ayre, went furthest. "We have to see the application by Uefa, we have to wait and see how fair they really play it. I have to say my level of confidence in it isn't very high." He also said it would be "a tragedy" for the game if it was not properly enforced.

The Bayern Munich president, Uli Hoeness, has said: "If Platini is consistent, he must kick two big clubs out of the Champions League in the coming years in order to set an example." Ron Gourlay, the Chelsea chief executive, told Bloomberg: "It's Uefa's competition so we want to make sure that we comply. All we've asked for is that Uefa police and manage the process with a clear, even playing field."

As Uefa never tires of reminding those who question whether FFP will put the brakes on unsustainable spending as promised or merely succeed in locking in the established order of the biggest earners, Abramovich was among those who backed the plans when they were first mooted.

The irony of Abramovich, who has spilled £1bn amid a sea of red ink on Chelsea over a decade, pulling up the drawbridge behind him has not been lost on his rivals.

Gianni Infantino, Uefa's general secretary, earlier this year told the Guardian he was confident that the rules, which came in last season and could see the first sanctions being applied in 2014-15, "have teeth". Clubs that exhibit warning signs will be investigated by a panel headed by the former Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene and sanctions handed down by a separate independent panel.

"When we first discussed FFP it was Chelsea [that attracted questioning], then you have Manchester City, then it was PSG. Our responsibility is to have a system that works for more than 630 clubs and not look at one club and neglect the rest. Each individual situation will be assessed very carefully by these two panels."

A Uefa spokesman on Monday said simply: "It will be up to the financial control body to decide on clubs that qualify for European competition and are licensed by Uefa."

Proponents of the FFP rules believe that, despite the cynicism surrounding the headline grabbing sums being gambled on big transfer targets, they are already having a subtle effect.

Squad sizes are remaining steadier, with one big name tending to exit for every one that arrives as clubs try to regularise their wage bills, and clubs appear to be investing more in infrastructure and youth development, which are discounted from the calculations.