"I sense that kind of pressure building from the media but we are working on things," he said. "Rafa has a programme under way and, as that unfolds, that will be the time for us to be judged, not now.
"We're not going to do something just to try to prove something. What we've said and what Rafa has said was that we had a programme and he would share that with us and that we would support it.
"The first part was that we identified a number of our existing star players whom Rafa wanted to sign on long-term contracts.
"That was the first step and it has been done. Now we're moving on to phase two, which is bringing players in."