Has Pep achieved like Fergie, Clough, Revie or Shankly ? No way..he wouldn’t even get in my top 10

IF someone gave me an intensive driving course and then handed me the keys to Lewis Hamilton’s car, I could motor fast around a track.

And if someone gave me a billion pounds to spend on a football team, the odds are I could make it function well.

So if Pep Guardiola was to win the Champions League with Manchester City this season, it would simply be par for the course.

And if he was to leave the Etihad on the back of it next su mmer, then he still wouldn’t have done anything in England to convince me he is the greatest manager of all time, as some under-30s seem to believe.

In a decade or two, I don’t think we’ ll look back on Guardiola as even one of the top 10 managers in football history. Top 20? Yes. But top 10, no. And top one? Nowhere near.

To be considered the best you have to have taken a sleeping giant that has been swamped by its rivals and turned it into a club which dominated domestically for nearly two decades and won two Champions Leagues, as Sir A l e x Fe r g u s o n d i d a t Manchester United.

Or taken a provincial club and turned it into English champions and two-time European Cup winners, as Brian Clough did at Nottingham Forest.

What Don Revie did with Leeds would arguably put him in the top five, as would Jock Stein’s achievements with Celtic, and we’ve not even mentioned Bill Shankly or Bob Paisley. Nor have we got to Arrigo Sacchi, Udo Lattek or Johan Cruyff.

Lest we forget, Guardiola hasn’t reinvented football, he has just applied his interpretation of what the legendary Cruyff did at Barcelona.

He has produced some stunning football with City, Bayern Munich and Barcelona, yes, but Barca was his club in his town, and he inherited – in X avi and Andres Iniesta – not only one of th e great est midfield pairings in the modern game but also – in Lionel Messi – arguably the greatest player ever to play football.

At Bayern he won three Bundesliga titles but the Champions League eluded him – yet Bayern won it before and after his time there.

It wouldn’t surprise me if City won it for the first time after he has gone, and not necessarily in his style.

When I’m judging managers, I like to see how they get on when the chips are down, as they are at City right now given their list of injuries.

But what we’re seeing from Guardiola’s side, title favourites at the start of the season, remember, is one brilliant performance, one average, and one poor, which is less th an y ou’d e xp e ct from a so-called super-motivator.

If Guardiola is as good as people tell us he is, his side, even with back-up players, would still be beating opponents left, right and centre. But they are not and that’s why

I can only go so far as to say he is a very good modern manager but someone who right now cannot compare with Clough and Ferguson.

Incidentally, while Liverpool fans worry about the impact of Virgil van Dijk’s lay-off, I would say Fernandinho is every bit as important to Manchester City’s dressing room so his six-week absence will hit them hard.

With both title-chasing sides missing quiet warriors, we are now in a six-week window in which champions Liverpool could potentially create an unassailable gap.

Pep hasn’t reinvented football.. he just adapted what Cruyff did at Barcelona