I saw a Pep Guardiola masterclass amid Ruben Amorim fever that will delight Man City fans

Pep Guardiola thought about the question long and hard. Sat in a seat he has occupied hundreds of times as Manchester City manager and could now sit in a hundred more before he calls it quits, he glanced to his left and surveyed the skyline of a city he has come to call home.

The City Football Academy's floor-to-ceiling windows let in what little light there was. It was smack bang in the middle of a Friday in November, but you wouldn't have known it. The skies were slate grey, the ground still frozen. It was, to all intents and purposes, miserable.

So why, Pep, have you signed on for another two years rather than the one everyone was suspecting? "For the weather!" he said, that familiar smile replacing the frowns on his forehead when he listens intently to his questioner, never quite sure what is coming next.

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There is a reason he does that - one that we will get on to later - and one that explains why he felt a duty to stay with City now when you sometimes got the impression he was pretty close to leaving.

But his wisecrack about the weather came early in what was a thoroughly engrossing Guardiola performance in front of the microphones. Sometimes these regular meetings with the City manager can be slow to get to the boil and difficult to prise open.

There is a view that he is often at his best when things aren't going well, when his back is as close to the wall as it ever gets at this place. There has been a hint of that lately, with City - and Guardiola - suffering an unprecedented four defeats in a row. That could become five this weekend, but the November