It didn’t take long for Joe Hart to realise the writing was on the wall for him at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola. “He said: ‘Of course you’ll be given the opportunity, but …’ As soon as there are any buts at the end you know there’s a decision,” the former England goalkeeper recalled last year. “It was a two‑hour conversation that kind of ended with him saying: ‘I can’t see this working.’”
Hart is by no means alone. Yaya Touré, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko are some of the big names jettisoned by the City manager in his pursuit of perfection since arriving in Manchester seven years ago. But while Guardiola showed once more this summer that he has no room for sentimentality by allowing Ilkay Gündogan and Riyad Mahrez to depart the treble winners and try “new challenges”, his former assistant and increasingly major managerial rival may have outdone his compatriot in the ruthless stakes.
