As everyone who knows me, I’m a massive fan of Guardiola and also the way Barcelona teach their teams to play.
Up to now, Guardiola has dealt with truly world class football teams and players. I don’t mean players who some may consider being in the top 30 in the world but majority of them are easily in the top 20. At Barcelona the philosophy was already there and players ingrained into that from an early age. At Bayern, he simply had to teach great technical players with great football brains, a different way of playing.
Next season comes his hardest test and we will see how great a manager he is. At Manchester City he has very good players and with De Bruyne, Aguero, Kompany and Silva players in the category of what he has worked with in the past. However he does not have great players in the critical areas he wants like full backs, centre of midfield and wide midfield in both areas.
We shall now see exactly how good Raheem Sterling is because up to now the only thing that has improved since he joined from Liverpool is the number of tattoos he’s had.
Football is not about tactics and systems foremost, it is about players who can execute those tactics and work to those systems and for the first time in his career Guardiola hasn’t got enough quality players to do that but I guess a couple of hundred million will change all that!

On Match of the Day on Saturday, Roy Hodgson was asked about the possibilities of playing Dele Alli and Ross Barkley in the same team and he said it could be a possibility depending on the formation. That tells you Hodgson doesn’t send teams out with its best players but he adjusts them to the opposition. That is a manager who plays with fear and is cautious.
Since when did Spain adjust their team not to include Xavi and Iniesta or France years ago not to include Zidane or Vieira? The fact is the top teams may adjust their tactics depending
on the opposition but they won’t leave out their best players. Hodgson also said Rooney is Rooney whatever that means but deciphering that he won’t drop him for any England games if he’s fit. Well Maradona is Maradona but I can’t see Argentina picking him anytime soon! I’m not saying Rooney shouldn’t play but it is the wrong message to send out to other strikers who right now are playing much better than Rooney.
I saw John Stones playing for Everton a few weeks ago and he was playing around with the ball at the back and he got closed down but the ball went for a goal kick to Everton. When he went to retrieve the ball he had to tell the Everton fans to calm down!
Here is a young footballer who is trying to play football. He doesn’t like to pump it into ‘channels’ or ‘hit the front man’ early because he no doubt sees the bigger picture and know if he did those things, the turnaround of possession could almost be instant as the ball he is playing would inevitably be a 50-50. Yet week in week out his game gets analysed so much that people are looking for each mistake. Of course he will make mistakes not just because he is young but that is the nature of the beast when you try to play intricate football. I’ve seen Puyol, Piquet and countless other top defenders who play football from the back give the ball away. Look at the times he sets up an attack though, count all those balls he plays and imagine if he had simply ‘hoofed’ it up the pitch then and possession would have been lost. In this country he would have been told he did well, ‘cleared his area’ stopped a possible attack but the fact is he would have lost the ball. John Stones can become a great footballer and people just need to let him play, learn from his own mistakes as he is intelligent enough to do that, focus on his positives. A similar thing happened to Joe Cole when playing for England, he gave the ball away to an Italian player and Italy scored. That is all the English media and pundits focused on, losing it in the wrong area. There were four defenders and a keeper behind him incidentally! Creative players will lose the ball, they are expressive and want to make things happen on the pitch, let them get on and do that. Managers and pundits will highlight the errors but don’t keep on going on about them.

My England 11 for the Euros if everyone is fit:
                                                 
                                           STURRIDGE
                             BARKLEY    ALLI    WALCOTT
                               WILSHIRE    HENDERSON
                   GIBBS    SMALLING    STONES    CLYNE
                                                  HART

Money in professional football and clever manipulative football agents are ruining the chances of English footballers progressing into the first teams.
Years ago every football fan would welcome all the top foreign talent into the UK as those players were technically superior to a lot of the players that were playing here.
From 1973 to 1993 the Players Player of the Year was British. Since then the award has been shared 22 times between a British Player and a foreign player.
The Football Writers Player of the Year award since 1994/95 stands at 14 to 7 in favour of foreign players.
When you look at the foreign winners, they have all been world class and would have and can for those still playing grace any team in the world.
Now the Premiership and the Championship and to some extent lower leagues are awash with foreign footballers who not only are no better than the English talent but are inferior.
This is mainly due to clever football agents and stupid football managers who think every African, Brazilian, etc. has to be a great player.
For example if you were to put Fernandinho or Fernando of Manchester City into the likes of Watford, West Bromwich or Sunderland for example, would those teams improve significantly?
I don’t think they would and the question is have those teams not got those type of players in their own Academies?
Managers and more importantly owners need to wake up and realise the ridiculous amounts of money they are spending on foreign players is buying them average overrated players. Invest that money in your own Academies and produce your own top class footballers.