Of all the managers that find themselves under pressure and on the end of extreme scrutiny this January, I never thought it would be Pep Guardiola.

Fifth place in the Premier League table - albeit three points off second - and on the back of a 4-0 hammering from Everton at the weekend have done little to ease that strain.

I've covered Guardiola during my time as a commentator both at Barcelona and Bayern Munich. My latter days at ESPN he was beginning his revolution at the Camp Nou. Through covering the Bundesliga I got to see the makeover there.

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It's a fascinating study. Only last week a survey by a German magazine asked who is the best coach in world football, and the person who led that poll was Pep Guardiola.

I always think short-termism rules in the UK, especially in England. Less so up here, perhaps.

Guardiola hasn't suddenly become a bad coach. I know that he's demanding. His style is very much his own, he's a perfectionist who asks a lot of players and not everyone can deliver exactly what he is looking for.

At Barcelona he came through the system and spent most of his career there. When he went to Bayern everyone had prepared themselves for the Guardiola era. They knew it was going to be different.

I speak to people at Bayern quite a lot and they will all quite happily say he's left a legacy for every Bayern coach to enjoy working with for the next few years. He's put the roots down and the opinion in Germany is certainly for the better.

Move to England and everything is 'Well what have you done for me lately?'

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It's about what happened last month, last week, losing dressing rooms and all that sort of thing.

Guardiola's track record speaks for itself and yeah City are going through a bad patch at the moment. People are wondering if they are going to be a Champions League team next season.

But surely a guy like him and with the CV he boasts, the style of football he gets his teams to play, surely irrespective of a bad patch there must be a longer term outlook than just to say things look bad and change course.

He will be under pressure to win the Premier League, and he should be. He sets high standards and he will have gone in there thinking City probably should win the title.

The Champions League is a different matter. When it gets to the latter stages it's more of a lottery, really. There are maybe only a few teams capable and City haven't come close to winning it so I still think that would be a big set up.

Domestically they have been a disappointment. Guardiola will be me more critical of himself than anyone else.

City have bought into his vision and sometimes it doesn't come into focus straight away. It didn't for Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool now people are singing his praises.

Guardiola has now been linked with making a swoop for his former Barcelona star Lionel Messi with astronomical amounts of money being named in connection with the deal.

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Is the pull of Guardiola enough to take Messi away from Barca? I never thought Messi would leave the Camp Nou for the Premier League, but I've maybe revised that in the last year or so. Perhaps right at the end of his career.

He is of course nowhere near that at the moment. He knows he's on to a good thing at Barcelona and has a team that is made for him. It always has been. Why swap that for an environment he's not going to necessarily love?

Money does come into it but Messi knows he's a contented man in Barcelona. That's why, even with his old mentor now in trouble at the Etihad, I don't see him appearing in a light blue jersey any time soon.