Pep can do as he likes at City... but he knows digging out De Bruyne in public is a big risk

WHEN I was playing at Liverpool, you would know if the coaching staff thought you were off your game because they would casually ask you a question or two as they passed you in a corridor or on the training field.

‘You OK, son? Everything all right at home?’

And then you would know. You would know they were wondering about you. From that point on, it was up to you to fix it.

I didn’t need to be told if I wasn’t quite on it. I would know and I would set about putting it right on the training pitch. Work harder.

I firmly believe not everything has changed between my day and this one. I still think top players know when their standards have dropped. They don’t need telling. On the whole, they will self-motivate.

And this in turn makes me wonder about Kevin De Bruyne and Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.

De Bruyne has been City’s best player for the last five years. He has been one of the top three or four players in the whole country. Four Premier League titles. An FA Cup. Almost 100 caps for Belgium. It’s some c.v. What a player.

Yet this season he hasn’t played in some important games. I was at the one City lost at Tottenham last month, for example, and he didn’t start that day.

Strange. And now Guardiola has dug him out a little in public. This week he said De Bruyne had to get back to doing the simple things well.

I have my theories about why this may have happened. It could be part of a deliberate tactic aimed at motivating the whole squad.

Someone told me that Sir Alex Ferguson used to do this with Ryan Giggs. He would deliberately pick on him and sometimes David Beckham in front of the other Manchester United players. It would send the squad a message that nobody — even two of the best players at the club — was safe from criticism.

It would help to make sure a talented group of footballers kept their feet on the ground. Fergie probably got that from his mentor Jock Stein.

Jock used to do that with me and Kenny Dalglish when we were with Scotland. He would dig us out in front of the rest. We knew what he was doing. Football is a team game, so sometimes you have to accept some of that treatment.

Maybe Guardiola is doing that. Maybe he is poking De Bruyne in order to make sure the rest are ready to up their levels ahead of the most important part of a season that has not always felt easy for them. For all I know, De Bruyne may even be in on it.

But I also know this. Criticising modern players in public is a risk for a manager. I would go as far as to say it is a last resort now and coaches and managers have to be really careful. Guardiola is safe as can be at City. He is almost unique in that. He can do almost as he pleases. But even he will know what can happen when a dressing room turns. I T IS hard for managers these days. They have to speak so much to the media. It must be suffocating. Of the ones I played for, only Jock would have coped.

Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan were brilliant football men but they would not have been at home in today’s environment where every single thing you say or do as a manager is analysed and pored over.

When I was managing, I was careful. Criticising a player in front of the whole team carried risks of its own. Doing it in the media, even more so. These days players and their agents can run a guy out of town quite easily once the mood in the dressing room turns.

De Bruyne played well against RB Leipzig on Tuesday night so you could say that Guardiola’s tactic worked, that his words had the desired effect.

Equally, De Bruyne may be the type of player who doesn’t pay attention to the noise and just does his own stuff.

I thought what he said himself at the World Cup was odd. With Belgium struggling in the group stage, he basically said in the media that some of his own team- mates were, perhaps, no longer up to it. If I was in that squad, I would not have accepted that.

All big players had egos in my day. It would be wrong to say otherwise. But they are on another level now. Premier League players are financially secure and that makes a difference in terms of how far you can push them. They are far more ready to challenge managers.

Given De Bruyne’s status within the game, I am sure he will not have enjoyed being publicly called out by his manager this week.

If Guardiola is playing a game, then it is one he must hope he wins. City have a title to defend and a Champions League to win. They will need De Bruyne every step of the way.