Pep Guardiola has revisited old tactic to prepare Man City players for 'defining' week

Erling Haaland hadn't trained with Manchester City for a week and his assessment of working under Pep Guardiola needed just one word - crazy.

When City players past and present are asked to describe Guardiola, they may not go as far as Haaland's headline-grabbing verdict, but they still use words like 'intense', 'obsessive', and 'genius.' Guardiola himself admits that he holds incredibly high standards, and the few insights we get into his training sessions suggest that those are maintained every single day.

City put four past Tottenham in January, but Guardiola made sure his players knew their attitude wasn't up to scratch. The turnaround since then has been admirable, yet you can be confident the intensity demanded by the manager has been maintained. So why has he sanctioned a holiday break just before a week he describes himself as season-defining?

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From Saturday lunchtime after City beat Newcastle, the squad were given the best part of three days off to do whatever they wanted. Guardiola told them to 'forget football', and assured them that he would be doing the same. The squad seemingly didn't need telling twice.

Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan went on a joint-trip to Milan with their partners, Julian Alvarez went skiing, while Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake also got away from Manchester. Erling Haaland looked to be enjoying some downtime, while Jack Grealish this week announced a huge new boot deal with Puma.

Guardiola has regularly stressed the benefits of his players switching off from football, but with such a packed schedule they rarely get the time. Since the resumption of the season after the World Cup,