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More broadly, Guardiola is a manager who tends to hear what the world is saying about him, his club and his team. Indeed the idea that Guardiola owns a burner X account has been doing the rounds for years.

He’s never confirmed as such but has been seen sitting in restaurants around the trendy Ancoats square scrolling the app. And his obsession with what the general public say about team selections points in particular to the work of a doom scroller.

At various junctures over his time here, he has referenced outcry at team selection decisions, the sort of which can only be garnered through X.

‘Did you read social media when I picked the team at Newcastle in the FA Cup?’ Guardiola asked in March 2026.

‘How did Pep pick that team? He lacks respect for the competition. How can the people say that? Why doesn’t he play Rodri? Why doesn’t he play Bernardo? Why doesn’t he play this player or that player? Why has he left Erling at home?’

Other interesting stuff:

City midfielder Phil Foden answered a knock on his front door to find Guardiola standing there unannounced. The men hugged and went inside where just about everything apart from football was discussed for an hour.

This instinctive but deep emotional intelligence extends to club staff, too. Guardiola sends notes of support to the City women’s team staff while inside his office hangs a list of birthdays of all first-team employees. The rule is that they bring the cake for the celebration but a fuss is then made. Birthday well wishes are beamed on screens around the training ground and a bottle of champagne may be presented.

At least two wider City staff members have been given extended compassionate leave for family reasons, at Guardiola’s request, while he took it upon himself to persuade club bosses that all staff should be paid in full during the Covid pandemic, as many Premier League rivals leant into the Government’s furlough scheme. On another occasion Guardiola went to war with chief operating officer Omar Berrada – now chief executive at United – over employee bonuses.

Guardiola walked into one tense meeting and told Berrada that he was paying employees £10,000 each from his own bonus as a Premier League title win pot. In no uncertain terms, Berrada was urged by his manager to sort out the rest – and quickly. Staff who sat in on that exchange gawped in amazement. Berrada, in his defence, had rightly been worried about the tax implications of gifts.