1. They're lying.
2. Just put it next to "you bought the league", "if you don't win with all you spent, you're a failure", "sportswashing", "Pep never built anything", "you cheated FFP", "come back when you've won X trophies like we have", etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. It's all about finding a way to rationalize City's success so that we ALWAYS lose no matter WHAT, so that they don't have to deal with the scoreboard.
SCOREBOARD. I love that word. A popular (ironically, football-hating) radio/TV sports host over here named Jim Rome uses that term whenever fans of a team criticize fans of a rival team for winning something. It's not even a noun -- it's almost a full sentence. Whenever someone starts in with "you got lucky" or "the refs blew a call" or "we lost because we had injuries", his closedown line is "SCOREBOARD." All that matters is the SCOREBOARD. Not last year's. Not next year's. THIS year's. SCOREBOARD.