Pep’s had a poor season and should put that right without his chequebook

FOOTBALL managers are judged on results and, given the players he has at his disposal, I’d give Pep Guardiola no more than a four out of 10 this season.

There’ll be no silverware for Manchester City after their FA Cup semifinal defeat and they will be there for the taking in the Manchester derby at the Etihad on Thursday. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Manchester United will definitely win because the game could go either way. But City will find it hard to lift themselves after what happened at Wembley on Sunday. There’s no way City should be scrabbling for a top-four slot with their squad and resources – the fact that they are is all down to boss man Guardiola. The possibility of finishing the season emptyhanded wasn’t in the script when City hired the Spaniard – the idea of finishing outside the Champions League places would have been laughed at. I’m hearing talk that Sheikh Mansour will throw north of £250million at a revamp of the squad in the summer but I’d be more inclined to tell Guardiola he has to work with what he has got. I’d be saying: ‘You’re supposed to be the world’s best manager so go and make these players better in the way Claudio Ranieri did with Leicester and Antonio Conte has done with Chelsea.’ Instead, it seems Guardiola is merely saying: ‘I’ll get it right eventually...as long as you give me a quarter of a billion quid.’ That’s not great management; that’s chequebook management. Apart from Leroy Sane (left), I’m struggling to think of a player Guardiola has genuinely improved over the course of this season. Of course, this time next year there’s a good chance we will be talking about him as a success again but only because City will have thrown so much money at him that he cannot fail. And I’ll go back to the point I’ve made before — only if Guardiola (right) took a Blackburn, a Swansea, or a Hull and made them a success would I fully buy into his hype. There was that spell of 10 wins at the start of the season but it was as if teams thought the Harry Potter of football had turned up, waving his magic wand on the sidelines, and noone was allowed to beat his side. Then they thought: ‘Hang on, they’re playing it back to the keeper, they’re shaky in defence – if we chase them down a bit more often and hassle them, we’ll get something here,’ and it busted the Guardiola myth. Now City face a real test against United and Guardiola against his old nemesis, Jose Mourinho. United are in good fettle and it will be interesting to see what approach Mourinho takes. I’d press high, press often, and be even more aggressive than United were against Chelsea recently. If they get on the attack then Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial will be able to sniff blood. If they can puncture City’s skin then I wonder if one or two Blue Moonies might bleed out.