Manchester City’s annual defence spending exceeds that of 47 actual countries With the capture of Benjamin Mendy from Monaco on Monday, Manchester City took their spending for the summer transfer window […]

With the capture of Benjamin Mendy from Monaco on Monday, Manchester City took their spending for the summer transfer window to a whopping £211.4m.

Manager Pep Guardiola has focused the vast majority of this expenditure on defensive players, with Mendy joining full-backs Kyle Walker (£45m) and Danilo (£26.5m) as well as goalkeeper Ederson (£34.9) as new additions at the back.

That means the club has spent a total of £158.4m (or USD $206.7m) on its defence – leading some on social media to draw tongue-in-cheek comparisons to the annual military budgets of actual countries:

Annual spending on defence: USA £820bn

Cuba £700m

Man City £200m

Bosnia £180m

Congo £135m — Paddy Power (@paddypower) July 24, 2017

But how accurate is this comparison? Well, it’s probably not as outlandish as you think.

Analysis by i can reveal that City have spent more on defenders this year than at least 47 nation states have on their defence budgets, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), a thinktank dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament.

While the club’s expenditure is nowhere near super powers like the US ($611bn) or China ($215bn), their budget eclipses EU members Malta ($57.5m), war ravaged Afghanistan ($174m) and even the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica ($118m).

Here is a full list of countries Manchester City has spent more than on defence this year: