Pep Guardiola's decision to quit club as he's told he should now leave Man City

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Pep Guardiola has already given an insight into what it would take for him to resign after being urged to step down as Manchester City boss. After almost 10 years of near constant success at the Etihad, Guardiola is battling to restore City’s domestic dominance after finishing behind Liverpool and Arsenal last season.

There have been suggestions that Guardiola may need a different challenge or a break from the game entirely, as he took between his success-laden spells at Barcelona and Bayern Munich. One person who agrees with that is performance analyst Carles Planchart, who worked with Guardiola at Barca, Bayern and City before leaving the Etihad at the end of last season.

Planchart believes a change would be in Guardiola’s best interests if he is to extend his managerial career, telling SPORT: “It’s a personal decision he'll have to make. I think a project should last five or six years, no more.

“But not for him, for everyone. Afterwards, you have to regenerate. As a friend, I would tell him to look for a new project because he still has a long way to go.”

Guardiola’s rationale for quitting Barcelona offers a clue into what it would take for him to leave City, as he admitted he struggled to motivate both himself and his players after winning 14 trophies in four years, including the Champions League twice.

He said in an interview with Audi in 2014: “We were incredibly successful. Winning 14 trophies in only four years was the greatest period in the club's history.

“But gradually I found it more and more difficult to motivate myself and to motivate the team. That is when you know it is time to walk away.”

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Planchart can understand why Guardiola has remained at City for so long, saying the club has given him the family feel he didn’t get at Barca or Bayern.

He added: “This is why he's been at City for so many years: they’ve treated us like family, they’ve let us work as if we were at home. He didn’t feel that way at Barca or Bayern.

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“He’s a football fanatic. His life is on the green, on the grass. He’s a genius, a creator. His greatest strength is how he invents football. The difficult thing in this life is creating; the rest of us are copycats. He’s number one at this.”

Guardiola appears to still have something left in the tank at City, who have recovered from back-to-back defeats to Tottenham and Brighton in August to climb to fifth in the Premier League, just three points off leaders Arsenal. Following the international break, City return to action against Everton at home on October 18.

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