Yesterday Paul Scholes revealed that Pep Guardiola has reportedly agreed to join Manchester City next summer.
Jurgen Klopp surprised many this week by announcing he will leave Borussia Dortmund at the end of the summer and he has already been linked with several clubs including Manchester City, Real Madrid and Arsenal.
With Manuel Pellegrini’s future at City very much uncertain, many see Klopp, a top manager looking for work, as the obvious replacement. However, yesterday Paul Scholes stated that the news in Manchester is that City have already lined up Pep Guardiola to take the job.
It’s no secret that the City hierarchy are admirers of the Bayern manager – they tried to lure him to the Ethiad after he left Barcelona but he opted to move to the German Treble-winning side.
With Guardiola’s contract up at the end of next season the Spaniard may well opt for a lucrative move to the Premier League, to a club that can challenge for trophies. But as Scholes adds to his claims, if Pep did take the helm at the Ethiad it will certainly be his toughest job yet.
The teams Guardiola inherited at Barcelona and Bayern were already challenging consistently in Europe, but Manchester City have famously failed to progress into the latter stages of the Champions League. For Guardiola to make City a genuine European force will certainly be a huge challenge, but if anyone can, Guardiola is one of, if not the best candidate for City.
Klopp’s style of management and his favoured tactics would be a more natural fit at Arsenal but with Wenger showing no signs he’d step down from his role at the club, the ‘Wenger Out’ fans may have to wait at least another year (but with Arsenal’s incredible form recently those calls have quietened down and it would be hard to justify replacing him).