Pep Guardiola

One day we’ll look back on the 2016-17 AS Monaco side in disbelief — how did one club house Kylian Mbappe, Thomas Lemar, Bernardo Silva, Fabinho and Tiemoue Bakayoko (all 23 or younger) at the same time? Their Ligue 1 triumph and Champions League semifinal run will live long in the memory, but the dismantling of the most exciting side in European football has begun, starting with 22-year-old Portuguese attacker Bernardo Silva.

Manchester City’s 3-1 victory over West Bromwich Albion on Tuesday all but secured their place in next season’s Champions League, ensuring that Pep Guardiola will be able to attract the talent he craves while performing a massive player clear out at the club.

The likes of Eliaquim Mangala, Wilfried Bony, Samir Nasri and Joe Hart will certainly be sold in the summer, and the futures of Fernando, Jesus Navas, Fabian Delph, Nolito, Pablo Zabaleta, Bacary Sagna, Gael Clichy, Yaya Toure and perhaps even Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany may lie elsewhere.

Each narrative in the English Premier League has a nauseatingly long lifespan until it utterly annihilates itself — it’s annually cyclical, like the depiction of a serpent eating its own tail. We belabor the same statistics, the same trends and the same memes until we’ve had our fill, proceeding to damn them out of existence like a child pop star whose career of cultural martyrdom has run its course.

It’s tragic to think about the gross output of the cast of characters in the Manchester derby when bridled with the vast sums of money spent on assembling them. The latest edition of Manchester United vs. Manchester City was a sobering affair that could serve as a harrowing documentary of the wastes of our time.

Former Everton midfielder Leon Osman made headlines today with a scathing critique of former teammate Ross Barkley, saying: “He’s been playing in the first team since he was 17 or 18. That’s a long time to have been playing in the Premier League and not kicked on, and not made that next step. It’s worrying that he’s still being talked about as a young player and ‘give him time’.”

22-year-old Joshua Kimmich is becoming frustrated by his lack of playing time at Bayern Munich under head coach Carlo Ancelotti.

After getting plenty of opportunities under Pep Guardiola, who is now the head coach of Manchester City, Kimmich has been limited to 10 Bundesliga starts this season.

Pep Guardiola has been named February’s EPL Manager of the Month after consecutive victories over West Ham, Swansea and Bournemouth, whoo! Perhaps it was because City had been held to a scoreless draw against Stoke on Wednesday, but Guardiola was in no mood to be rewarded for his nine-point haul in the shortest month of the year.

Waking up this morning to work out any takeaways from the first leg of Manchester City’s clash with Monaco is like piecing together a night of heavy drinking. It was a night of degeneracy — mistakes were made, people were throwing themselves headfirst at objects and someone pulled out their Willy (Caballero).

As we move toward the second leg at the Stade Louis II in Monaco on March 15, the most obvious talking point will be City’s defense of their two-goal advantage. So what’s Pep Guardiola’s plan?