Something may have been lost in the translation, not that Roberto Mancini has much need of an interpreter any more, or the Manchester City manager may not have expressed himself quite as precisely as he might have wished, but his remarks on signing Jack Rodwell from Everton must have made David Moyes flinch. "Rodwell is a good player," Mancini said. "He is young, and now for the first time he is at a club that plays to win, so it will be different for him."

Manchester United never said that when they prised Wayne Rooney out of Goodison Park. It was perfectly obvious to all concerned that whatever the player's initial loyalties, Everton were simply not in a position to turn down £23m or block Rooney's progress to a club that could offer Champions League football on a regular basis, but Sir Alex Ferguson managed to complete the deal without rubbing the selling club's noses in the fact of their poverty.

It is news to most Evertonians that Moyes and his players do not play to win. They play so well, in fact, on an extremely limited budget, that Mancini only recorded his first victory against them last season. The previous season Everton beat City home and away, motivated to a degree by Moyes's simmering resentment at the perceived lack of class the Mark Hughes regime demonstrated in tempting Joleon Lescott away from Merseyside.

Everyone at Everton understands that everyone is potentially for sale – the same situation applies at just about every Premier League club from Arsenal downwards, although Arsenal do not always appear to realise it – and given that even Manchester United were unable to hang on to Cristiano Ronaldo it could be said that these days only Chelsea and Manchester City, thanks to their generous backers, are not selling clubs.

That's the way football is now, there's no particular shame in it, though for Mancini to assert that just because City are rich and have recently won a couple of trophies they are one of the few clubs that plays to win is a step too far. It might be true, Rodwell will certainly win more with City than he ever would at Everton, but it was an undiplomatic and unnecessarily insulting way of outlining the difference between the two clubs. If only City, United and perhaps Chelsea are playing to win, the rest of us might as well go home.

Mancini should ask himself whether Everton were playing to win at Old Trafford at the end of last season, when with nothing in particular at stake, they refused to lie down and came back to shock Ferguson and United by claiming a 4-4 draw, denying the home side two points that went a long way to allowing City to get back into the title race.

With their fiercely competitive ethos under Moyes and their proud record of punching way above their financial weight, Everton are the very last team to deserve being dismissed as non-triers. Moyes's team actually do very well, considering the reward in terms of trophies and medals these past 10 years has been nil, to keep coming back for more and keep making bigger teams fight for every point. Everton keep their fans fairly happy, on the whole, which is no easy task when you start each season knowing pretty well you are not going to win anything and you know for sure your chairman will not be flashing the cash to bring in a David Silva or Eden Hazard.

If Premier League football is about anything it is about teams like Everton, whose professional pride and competitive work ethic gives the moneybags teams someone to play. As their owner Bill Kenwright knows only too well, there are only so many billionaires out there willing to write blank cheques to turn ordinary clubs into extraordinary success stories, and at any given time there can only be two or three clubs attempting to buy up all the best players.

Ironically, Everton were among the "big five" clubs agitating for the changes that eventually brought about the Premier League 20 years ago, and compared to the other four – Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool and United – they have probably fared the worst in the brave new world. Yet only two of those clubs, Arsenal and United, have won titles in the Premier League era. No one 20 years ago would have foreseen Liverpool going so long without a title, just as no one could possibly have envisaged Chelsea and City getting the sort of financial help to transform themselves into major players on the European stage.

But at least Everton are still going. They are still producing players good enough to sell, which is just as well given their bank balance, and they have resisted the temptation to chase the dream, as Peter Ridsdale so memorably put it, by spending beyond their means.

Other aspects of recent football history which would have been viewed with amazement 20 years ago include the rise and spectacular fall of Leeds United, and the perplexing series of takeovers and shadowy ownership deals that have brought Portsmouth to the edge of extinction. Pompey, like Everton, are a grand old club to play for and to support, and ought to be regarded as part of the furniture of English football. Seen better days, perhaps, and both stadiums belong in a museum, but what an atmosphere on matchdays. What a solid groundswell of local support.

It would appear from the latest bulletins that local support is just about all Pompey have left, and unless the fans' co-operative that is trying to buy back the club can find sufficient funds to prove itself viable, the club could disappear.

Not shortly to come back in a slightly altered guise, like Rangers, but disappear without trace. The only identifiable financial asset the club is trying to cling to is the parachute payment from relegation from the Premier League in 2010. Maybe clubs have always gone out of business, even in football's boom years financial survival has often been tricky, but Pompey were in the top league as recently as two years ago and won the FA Cup in 2008.

Yes, that may have played a large part in their downfall, and doubtless many mistakes and miscalculations were made, but in terms of what might have been envisaged when the Premier League came into being 20 years ago, going bust four years after running around Wembley with the FA Cup would not even have cropped up in anyone's wildest dreams.

Just like Everton having to put up with a Manchester City manager telling them they don't play to win.