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 breaks in even years have now become synonymous with contract extensions.
So it was this week, and any hint of negativity was washed away by the news that Guardiola is staying. The 53-year-old made the point that he could be out of a job quickly if things don’t improve and stressed on several occasions that he is a hostage to results, but nobody believes a blip will become anything even approaching a minor crisis.
If any tabloid editor was toying with the idea of inserting a crack into City’s crest, then the contract extension glued it all back together. Those of us on the ground in Manchester had to decide where to be on Friday. There was something new at Carrington or something old – and staying even longer still – at the CFA. This was a reminder that Guardiola can deliver. That sometimes he can be the “boss of this room”, as he once famously quipped of another Portuguese to manage Manchester United.
Guardiola and Amorim were going head-to-head for the first time on Friday. There were no points at stake, but this was a battle for back pages and for air time. Once again, Manchester was the European capital of football. Guardiola did his best to deliver for the Blue half of the city.
He revealed he had taken just two hours to agree to a new deal with chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarek and chief executive Ferran Soriano. When he finally got round to explaining why he was staying for two years, he admitted he wanted to avoid an autumn he had just experienced, when every other question was about his future.
But he was at his most illuminating when another subject, now all too familiar to him, came up. Those 115 charges. Once Guardiola had taken in the question about whether he enjoys defending his club off the field, his furrowed brow disappeared, he leaned back in his chair and you could almost see a twinkle in his eye.
“I prefer not to be in that position, but once it’s there, I love it,” Guardiola beamed, those final three words delivered with the volume and the tempo slightly raised, compelling you to pay attention because the good stuff is coming.
“When you believe in your club, and the people there. I believe what they say to me and the reasons why. I said, “OK, let’s see”. I cannot say yet because we’re awaiting the sentence in February or March – I don’t know when – but at the same time, I like it.”
That is as big a reason as any to commit his future to the club. If City were top of the league, cruising to a fifth successive title, and had been cleared in the courts, maybe he would have ridden off into the sunset. But they’re not, and he’s not leaving like this.
With that, Guardiola was off. Back on to those training pitches he has graced thousands of times, braving the Mancunian chill in November. Storm Bert is due to hit this weekend. Maybe it’s a sign.
