GUARDIOLA, END OF AN ERA?

The good old Pep.

Pep Guardiola and Rodri look like two people in a covenant relationship or siamese twins. Pep has never been thesame since Rodri "ditched" him.

He has done well to try to find alternatives, I mean to patch things up, without his ideal partner who rudely left him. The club in no small way, gave him a juicy checkbook to bring in players, which he did.

This January, the Premier League champions spent no less than €218 million on new signings. This is not only the highest amount for any club in the English top-flight, but comfortably more than any other club around the world. Infact in a larger context, the money spent on bolstering Pep Guardiola’s misfiring squad made up around 46% of the total amount of money spent by all Premier League clubs combined, in the window. They bought in for all three major positions of football- attack, midfield, defence.

It's really like the story of a jilted lover, you spend so much(sometimes too much) trying to comfort yourself.

But this isn't a story of a permanent split, someday Rodri and Pep will be "reconciled", be united again doing what they do best and definitely this City side will be refreshingly different.

TOO LATE

However, however, there's another angle to the matter.

I think that, even with whatever, Pep will never be thesame.

Why? Even with Rodri back?

Yes. I think that the master has become a victim of his own prosperity in the business. Today he has trained coaches directly and indirectly. I'm saying there are a whole lot of Pep "clones" everywhere. Even the ones who don't play like him developed a football style dedicated to negating Pep's. In the end, it is still the Pep effect you know.

This is why I would like to make a recommendation to a school like the prestigious Harvard University to give Mr. Pep Guardiola a Honrary Doctorate Degree. Wth all due respect to Mr Cryuff, one man– Pep Guardiola– has dominated football in the last, about 2 decades like no one else, beginning from his reign at Barcelona. Yes it is not that he has won more trophies than others, but it is that he changed the philosophy of football more than any world over, and this is no exaggeration – thus Africa,Asia,Australia are in on it.

Football schools that Pep doesn't know anything about, now train kids to play the Pep way.

I SO SUBMIT

My theory is therefore that, the world of football has learned Pep and caught up with him. I mean that there are a sufficient number of coaches who can now stand up to Pep. Quite frankly he has finally been demystified.

I do not see him dominating the EPL as before, I don't need to talk of Europe because he has dominated that sphere just yet.

I think it's bye-bye to the good old Pep. Ofcourse he would still be world class, just no more as dominant.

Can he re-invent himself? I think not in the next 3 years.