The next three stages of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City revolution

John Sessions. Louis van Gaal. Jeremy Corbyn. Ja Rule. All of them indisputably are, or were, the pre-eminent genius in their field. They redefined what it meant to be excellent, and left a new template to inspire the next crop of talent to follow and even improve upon what they left. For Sessions, it was Russell Howard. For Corbyn, it was Owen Smith. For Rule, it was Tyga. For Van Gaal, it is clearly Pep Guardiola, the man who transformed football, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. Up next is Manchester City. He’s already made waves with the team. Nolito, Ilkay Gundogan and Oleksandr Zinchenko are the first part of the transformation, but there’s more to come. With that in mind, and with access to Yahoo’s incredibly reliable Manchester City source, here are three of the most important stages of City’s continued development.

Joe Hart in midfield

Joe Hart has struggled with form for the past few years. He does remain capable of the exceptional though, and both for England and Manchester City, he has been at the heart of some successes. With his shot-stopping ability and overbearing shouting, he is seen by some as a decisive leader for both club and country, and is a captain of both sides in some form, if not always officially recognised. However, there are some weaknesses for him to work on, such as the left hand side of his body and anything that happens around it, where he is unable to touch the ball. This reduces his effectiveness as a goalkeeper.

No matter. Pep Guardiola is nothing if not a revolutionary able to redefine the very concept of football, and the positions within it. According to sources close to Hart he has been told that he will be used mainly as an outfield player, to maximise his talents. With the focus taken away from the stuff he has to do with his hands, the source attests, Hart will be free to flourish in amongst the actions where his progressive approach to the game, which involves screaming and shouting at everyone around him, can be best put to use. It should be noted that this could all be a misunderstanding on Hart’s part, as a member of Guardiola’s coaching staff said that what was actually at the crux of the plan for Hart was ‘to keep him as far away from the goal as possible.’

Mike Summerbee is back

Guardiola is passionate not just about all he can achieve in modern football, but what he can learn from the past. That’s why he talks to Marcelo Bielsa. Not because of what Bielsa is doing now - exhausting players six games into the season, bottling taking a job in Lazio, and never winning anything - but because of his lessons from the past. Guardiola is such a genius that he can look at Bielsa and find something we mere mortals can’t. Looking at him, he looks like the kind of coach with an incredibly short-sighted approach to the game, one who doesn’t understand that a season lasts from the very start to the very end, and one whose focus on kick-and-run is incredibly limiting. Not to Guardiola, obviously, who has taken a few qualities and lessons from Bielsa and somehow improved upon it, magically ameliorating the stamina of his sides to incredible levels.

But it’s not just with Bielsa where he is prepared to draw upon the history of the game. He has brought Mike Summerbee back into the fold, giving him a place on the first team coaching staff. True to form, Summerbee is currently complaining that he’s not being used in the squad, given how he considers himself superior to most of the current players, and constantly pointing out that he grew up in a time where they had to eat whippets for breakfast and use an outside toilet, and youngsters don’t show any respect these days.

Mamadou Sakho, Chris Smalling and Laurent Koscielny

Even if Guardiola may have made a misstep with his use of Summerbee, he is bringing in other mind games to unsettle his opponents and their fans. He will soon leak his plan to reinforce the back four at the Etihad, as he names his top targets as Liverpool’s Mamadou Sakho, United’s Chris Smalling, and Arsenal’s Laurent Koscielny, offering £30 million for each of the players.

Guardiola knows that each of the players are terribly short of the required standard for Champions League football, and to make a Premier League challenge. Smalling is yet to learn anything but has been elevated in the minds of people not able to notice that his improvement came only in a side as unambitious, conservative and cowardly as United under Louis van Gaal. Koscielny is as unreliable as any other Arsenal defender, so bad that Rafael Benitez is believed to be an admirer, and Sakho has been lionised by Liverpool fans who refused to believe that anyone who joins them is less than world class or, at a push, potentially world class. By offering money for each of these players, he knows that he can set each of the managers against their fans, because surely each manager will be desperate to get each of their respective clowns off their books, and at a profit, too.

Guardiola will simply loan them to NYCFC or whichever Australian franchise they have at the moment, should he be successful. Until he remembers that he has Eliaquim Mangala in his squad still, at which point at least one will be immediately recalled to the first side, where City fans will hail whomever it is as a ‘typical Guardiola signing’.