PEP GUARDIOLA’S Barcelona team will be remembered for playing some of the best football we have ever seen.
With Andres Iniesta, Xavi and Lionel Messi they were mesmerising to watch at times with the way they interchanged passes and moved.
What people forget, however, is that they did the dirty, tough side of the job as well.
When they lost the ball their work rate to get it back was incredible, in all areas of the pitch.
It often seemed they had an extra two or three men. Every time an opponent got the ball they would be hounded down until Barca could retrieve it and start painting their pretty pictures again.
In the 2011 Champions League final even a player as talented as Ryan Giggs could rarely find himself a square yard of space to do anything in.
It was amazing that they were able to do this for 90 minutes.
But they did it and it was that, as much as anything, which made them arguably the best club side of all time.
You don’t need to have Messi and Xavi’s ability to do this part of the job either.
But not every player would be up for this which is why Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s time with Guardiola at the Nou Camp was short-lived.
I’m not having a go here — but that just wasn’t his game.
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It is beginning to look like everyone at Manchester City is buying into it, although it will take time for it to click for a full 90 minutes.
That is the most worrying thing for the rest. In the Premier League they have had two really good halves. The first 45 minutes at home to West Ham and away to Manchester United.
Both times they let their opponents back into the game.
Yet they have won six out of six in all competitions.
You could see traces of Pep’s Barca in what they were trying to do at Old Trafford on Saturday.
They were at it from the first whistle. Wayne Rooney got the ball and bang someone was on him.
Paul Pogba, the world-record signing, disappeared in a blur of blue.
Ibrahimovic similarly found himself harried and hassled.
The City players were 50 per cent sharper than United in every phase of play in that first period.
That is after a couple of months of Guardiola’s guidance so imagine how good they are will be in six months.
It was thought they would struggle without Sergio Aguero on Saturday.
But it made no difference with the work rate and movement of Kevin De Bruyne and Kelechi Iheanacho.
At the back, the potential of John Stones is being fulfilled with every game. Alongside him was Nicolas Otamendi. He can annoy with his rolling around whenever he is touched but he proved that when Vincent Kompany is out there is an equally capable replacement.
While Manchester United have had a good start to the season, there were a few worrying signs in this game.
Starting Jesse Lingard and Henrikh Mkhitaryan proved a mistake and Jose Mourinho said he could have changed it after 20 minutes but did not want to shatter the confidence of those players. But he has made big calls like that before.
It is already a step up from the Louis van Gaal reign but, for now, they have some catching up to do to get to City’s level.
And City are only halfway to where Guardiola wants them to be — that is a big concern for Mourinho and everyone else.
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