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Pep Guardiola refused to rule out a move for

- and insists Manchester City can compete with Real Madrid for the biggest players.

City have formally opened talks over a world record bid for the Monaco striker in an attempt to hijack Real’s pursuit of the 18-year-old.

Guardiola is adamant he is at a club with the financial muscle to challenge Europe’s giants.

“Madrid doesn’t have more than Manchester City have,” he said. “Players are very important and we always try to get the best players possible.

“Abu Dhabi came in and invested in the team. Over the past five or six years we climbed to the top and we’re now in the top three or four.

“In order to get to the level of Madrid or Barcelona we just need time.”

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City are awaiting a response from Monaco after firming up their interest in Mbappe over the past 24 hours here in Los Angeles.

Questioned about progress over Monaco’s prize asset, Guardiola said: “The player is still at Monaco - still on that team.

“Anything can happen - we are still looking at a lot of other players, but he is still on that team.”

He added: “The Premier League is so attractive and the agreements are good.

“All the clubs think about their potential and their squads getting better. We try and we will see.

“Now there is a period where there are a lot of doubts in terms of the players who are here and who will be here or not.

“We have to wait and meanwhile prepare the team as well as possible.”

City are also continuing their pursuit of another forward in Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez.

“We have two exceptional forwards in Gabriel (Jesus) and Sergio (Aguero),” said Guardiola. “We will see. The market finishes on August 31.

“We will see what happens with the people who are here with the loan players, the transfer players.

“In the end maybe we’re going to do something or not.

“The other clubs are going to sign many many players, so we’ll see at the end of the transfer window.”

Guardiola has already spent in excess of £200m on Bernardo Silva, Benjamin Mendy, Kyle Walker, Ederson Moraes, Danilo and Douglas Luiz.

His outlay will top £300m if he secures Mbappe - but he is adamant City are just paying the going rate.

“It’s a lot,” he said. “I think 10 years ago Madrid for example paid £30m for Pepe and Barcelona £37m for Dani Alves.

“Ten years later, that is the value now.

“That period was amazing and in the last two years it increases a lot.

“I could not imagine two or three years ago that people would pay £100m or £120m for one player. Now it’s happened and it’s going to happen more.

“I would like to pay less for the club, but the market is the market.

“We had four full-backs and Manchester City didn’t invest in a fullback for the last seven years. All four were 31 or 32 and we decided we had to make the squad younger.

“All the clubs spent a lot of money not just us. We are going to see until August 31 the amount of new transfers coming.

“We will see 70, 80, 90, 100m, maybe more than that. Maybe one day it’s going to stop, we will see.”