Pep Guardiola and Manchester City’s sky blue wash will define this era | Barney Ronay

The manager has become central to Manchester City’s approach of setting about elite sport like a political project

It seemed fitting that Manchester City should come storming back from the brink the way they did, Ilkay Gündogan soaring like a small, technically adept avenging phoenix to bullet his header very carefully into the top corner of the Aston Villa net. This is how they do this stuff around here. Not with more heat, more blood, more chaos; but with cleaner lines, greater clarity, a red mist of extreme precision.

Within six minutes of that opening act Pep Guardiola’s champions had completed the most beautifully orderly emergency comeback in English footballing history. And there is something genuinely fearless about being able to play football this way, to become more not less yourself when the pulse is pounding, time running short, the world closing in at your back.