Pep Guardiola sends ominous warning to Man Utd after they pinch key Man City figure

United have stunningly made Man City’s Omar Berrada their new chief executive to try and turn around their fortunes but Guardiola claims it won’t be that easy

It was the most unexpected departure of Manchester City’s January transfer window. Not Kalvin Phillips, dispatched on loan to West Ham with Pep Guardiola’s best wishes and praise for his attitude on the training ground and with the unlikely suggestion he could come back to play a part at the Etihad Stadium, though the telling admission was that City will not look to replace him. Not Phillips but Omar Berrada.

Manchester United’s new chief executive has done a reverse Denis Law or Carlos Tevez, swapping the blue half of Manchester for the red. His appointment by the new regime at Old Trafford, under Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has been widely hailed as a coup. The sense is that City have been the best off the field, as well as on it in recent years. United could learn from their rivals, borrowing from their thinking, perhaps pilfering their plans, pinching their Chief Operating Officer.

“Obviously his knowledge goes to United, that’s the reality,” said Guardiola. “We learned a lot from Omar but he’s learned a lot from the club and now he’s gone to United. He is a lovely person: incredible character, incredible professional. Yesterday I saw him, we hugged and I wished him all the best, deeply, because he’s a fantastic person.”

And yet there was a warning to accompany the silken words. A figure of Berrada’s experience and credibility will help United; but when his gardening leave expires and he joins, he may not rebrand a struggling club as serial winners on his own. “Maybe United thinks with this person everything is going to change – congratulations. I don’t know if this is going to happen,” mused Guardiola, clicking his fingers to make a point. “But I don’t know if by doing this, everything is going to be sorted and it works. If it does happen then, oh my god, they have to make a stand for Omar Berrada in the future because he’d deserve it.”

It may have been a particularly acute observation. There are times when United have seemed to look for a one-stop solution, seeing a silver bullet in Jose Mourinho’s CV or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s love of life at Old Trafford, believing the quality of Paul Pogba or Alexis Sanchez would be transformative. There are moments when they have looked enviously at their neighbours, seeking to copy them, gazump them and trump them. Some of their recruits in the past decade have been former City targets, whether Sanchez or Harry Maguire or Fred. There has been a former City academy product, in Jadon Sancho. They have not been conspicuous successes, to say the least.