Hart-break for City and England keeper?

Leroy Sané, the £40 million winger, looks set to miss Pep Guardiola’s first game in charge of Manchester City because of a hamstring injury. The two clubs also spent a healthy amount of money during the transfer window trying to strengthen their squads.

The former Manchester United defender said: “At worldwide level, if you look at the last two tournaments, we haven’t had a player who can bring the ball out of defence, who can put his foot on the ball and go, “Right, let me control it a little bit or step into midfield”.

Now they have Guardiola.

However, the 45-year-old maintains spending time at Barcelona will be a tougher test than taking over Manchester City.

To call those high expectations would be an understatement. Much like last season’s odds, top teams like Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea have the best odds, but lest we forget that it is anyone’s league to win.

If Guardiola can’t win the Premier League with City or fail to match Pellegrini’s performance in Europe then it would leave himself open to critics. They take on a Hull City side, that has been depleted by injuries, and are now without a manager.

And who could forget about the Champions, Leicester City.?!

The question is whether he can do that this season.

Amid musings over sophisticated stylistic innovation, renewed hostilities with Mourinho, the peculiarities of the English game and a squad in transition, that simple and stark bottom line will remain unmoved for Guardiola at the Etihad Stadium.

They will be patient, and to be fair to Moyes, it’s not the best of starts for Sunderland. This for a team that is experiencing a major systematic and philosophical shift under Guardiola, one that will nearly definitely take some time to set in. Meanwhile, Arsenal fans are crossing their fingers that Leicester City prized player and PFA Player of the Year Riyad Mahrez will suit for the Gunners. That doesn’t sound like a European champion or even European finalist.

“It’s United or City”. It highlighted just how hard it is to win a European championship.

But as the legendary football player and manager Josef “Sepp” Herberger puts it: “The ball is round and the game lasts for 90 minutes (Der Ball ist rund und das Spiel dauert 90 Minuten)”.

However, buying for tomorrow does not mean City’s boss will expect anything less than excellence today.

Guardiola couldn’t get to a Champions League final at Bayern Munich. Manchester United will come into this game full of confidence, having won the Community Shield on Sunday against Leicester, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic and co. should be able to see off Bournemouth comfortably, and get the Jose Mourinho era off to a great start.

Although Guardiola acknowledged he needed time to impose his style on Club, he was in England “to win titles”. The last time this happened, they went so very close to claiming their first Premier League title in 25 years, albeit with Suarez and Sturridge scoring for fun.

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While reinforcements have been added in almost all other areas of the park, Guardiola is yet to sign a defender, a position that City needed to improve on the most.