sport news Why next season is set to be Pep Guardiola's last dance, reveals JACK ... trends now

Barely a soul knocked around the building. Pep Guardiola was there, though, bright and relatively early. It was the morning after Manchester City's staff Christmas party five years ago and the mood remained celebratory.

The year had brought an unprecedented domestic Treble and the element of back-slapping still lingered. Sources said the players still had the drive to do more for their manager and Guardiola felt performance levels had been maintained, although results had dropped off. Liverpool threatened to run away with the Premier League.

What greeted Guardiola at the training ground hours later, and his reaction to it, tells all about what City will be missing when he eventually says adieu.

'Back-to-back Premier League titles and nobody is working,' he said when breezing through the offices. 'What the...?' It does not take great smarts to work out how that sentence ended.

City have won every single Premier League title since that season. Nobody has been allowed to settle and it is a standard set by Guardiola from boot room to kitchen, from boardroom to the hot desk offices.

When he leaves, what will vanish is this force of nature, this leader who drags everyone and everything with him, someone who has become an honorary Mancunian and - somewhat against his better judgement - a supporter of Manchester City.

This is what City have had from him. That drive, the sort that can knock people off their stride initially, and absolute insistence that what happens on the grass is a reflection of the organisation as a whole, for good and bad. 

That 2019-20 was their worst season since his first - picking up a mere Carabao Cup, the horror - proves this belief.

'Pep enjoys carbonara,' a source said. 'He wants that every day, the best. He doesn't want to then go to fried rice instead.' 

We can talk about how he has reimagined English football, changing it beyond recognition so that now Hackney Marshes - or, closer to home, Hough End Fields - is full of amateur teams attempting to 'beat the press' and tinkering with inverted full backs.

A manager is a visionary when their jargon hits the mainstream and that is certainly the case for Guardiola.

We can talk about all that and the fact he is a serial winner, despite the surprising defeat by Manchester United at Wembley in the FA Cup final.

We know nobody holds a candle to him over here and that only Carlo Ancelotti has more Champions Leagues in their trophy cabinet.

We know that even if City are proven to have cut illegal corners in accelerating their rise, then this scale of domination is still not possible without Guardiola's contribution.

We know what Jurgen Klopp thinks of him and the terms in which Mikel Arteta speaks of his master. Or how coaches in the lower leagues openly discuss him as a reference point. Bolton's Ian Evatt has mentioned you again, Pep, how does that feel? Probably quite nice, actually, and he does genuinely notice these things.

He notices plenty and there is no hiding for those who work under him. He notices how his squad are playing for him and has, in the past, based decisions on his three contract renewals around that.

But this time is a little different in the sense that, if he is truly honest with himself, there is not much else to do in this part of the north west that he has called home for eight years.

It was only supposed to be three seasons, four at a push. What Guardiola has delivered is beyond City's wildest dreams, but so too has been his commitment, further indoctrinated in the wake of the 115 Premier League charges. They have provided additional fuel which has helped keep him going.

It is all quite tiring this, however, and next summer feels like a natural conclusion. It is tiring railing against the world, riling up 20 footballers to convince them this one might mean more than the last. As Jurgen Klopp openly admitted during his farewell Liverpool season, there comes a

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