Pep Guardiola sends ominous warning to Man Utd after they pinch key Man City figure

It was the most unexpected departure of Manchester City’s January transfer window. Not Kalvin Phillips, dispatched on loan to West Ham with Pep Guardiola’s best wishes and praise for his attitude on the training ground and with the unlikely suggestion he could come back to play a part at the Etihad Stadium, though the telling admission was that City will not look to replace him. Not Phillips but Omar Berrada.

Manchester United’s new chief executive has done a reverse Denis Law or Carlos Tevez, swapping the blue half of Manchester for the red. His appointment by the new regime at Old Trafford, under Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has been widely hailed as a coup. The sense is that City have been the best off the field, as well as on it in recent years. United could learn from their rivals, borrowing from their thinking, perhaps pilfering their plans, pinching their Chief Operating Officer.

“Obviously his knowledge goes to United, that’s the reality,” said Guardiola. “We learned a lot from Omar but he’s learned a lot from the club and now he’s gone to United. He is a lovely person: incredible character, incredible professional. Yesterday I saw him, we hugged and I wished him all the best, deeply, because he’s a fantastic person.”

And yet there was a warning to accompany the silken words. A figure of Berrada’s experience and credibility will help United; but when his gardening leave expires and he joins, he may not rebrand a struggling club as serial winners on his own. “Maybe United thinks with this person everything is going to change – congratulations. I don’t know if this is going to happen,” mused Guardiola, clicking his fingers to make a point. “But I don’t know if by doing this, everything is going to be sorted and it works. If it does happen then, oh my god, they have to make a stand for Omar Berrada in the future because he’d deserve it.”

It may have been a particularly acute observation. There are times when United have seemed to look for a one-stop solution, seeing a silver bullet in Jose Mourinho’s CV or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s love of life at Old Trafford, believing the quality of Paul Pogba or Alexis Sanchez would be transformative. There are moments when they have looked enviously at their neighbours, seeking to copy them, gazump them and trump them. Some of their recruits in the past decade have been former City targets, whether Sanchez or Harry Maguire or Fred. There has been a former City academy product, in Jadon Sancho. They have not been conspicuous successes, to say the least.

Berrada will at least bring an understanding of City’s inner workings. “When you buy a player from another club you buy the knowledge that this player has had in the past with other managers and teammates,” Guardiola reflected. “That is normal.” Yet even if he knows their transfer targets, part of Berrada’s problem in making United Manchester’s dominant force is the team he leaves behind, some of whom he helped sign.

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“Kevin De Bruyne is still in Man City,” Guardiola underlined. “De Bruyne will play here. Erling Haaland will play here so in the end it’s not that simple like that. Otherwise with the power of United they would have done it before.”

United’s financial might may have been negated by various combinations of impatience, incompetence, misfortune and shifting strategy. Guardiola feels City’s long-term planning has helped them: he is in his eighth season in charge while director of football Txiki Begiristain is in his 12^th year at the Etihad Stadium.

“If you take a look at the clubs who have success, they have the same sporting director or hierarchy for a long time,” he said. “Building something takes time. Txiki has been massively important. He was here before I arrived and was stable in the club.”

Guardiola has long been relaxed about key personnel joining rivals, even if Berrada’s switch to United feels very different to selling Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko to Arsenal, managed by his former assistant Mikel Arteta. “If a person is unhappy here and wants to go to United and there’s a deal for the right price then why not? No problem,” he rationalised. “If Omar is not happy here and wants to go there, he has to go.”

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And while there has been continuity in some respects at City, there has been change in others. “In this club, these situations happen,” Guardiola said. “The club will move forward. Maybe we’ll find a way to replace him.”

And, over the last few years, City have tended to find high-calibre replacements. Guardiola is in effect on to his second team of his time now, with De Bruyne and John Stones the only survivors from his debut campaign. Fit again, each could start at Tottenham in the FA Cup on Friday. The Belgian has not begun a game since August while, for a 10^th successive match, Haaland will be absent. City have coped without each.

“We are stronger with Kevin and Erling but we can cry and wait five months or we can move forward,” Guardiola added. It is a philosophy which explains why, much as he likes him, he is shedding no tears about Berrada’s sudden move.