What does Pep want?

Joe Hart is considering a move away from Manchester City having lost his place in the team. If the England international is ill-suited to Pep Guardiola’s style, what exactly does the Catalan want from a No 1?

You have to go back five years for the clearest example. It was December 2011 and Guardiola’s Barcelona travelled to the Bernabeu knowing defeat to Real Madrid would leave them six points behind their La Liga rivals.

The stakes were high, but Barcelona made a disastrous start as goalkeeper Victor Valdes played a loose pass straight to Angel Di Maria 25 yards from goal. The ball found its way to Karim Benzema via a couple of deflections, and his close-range finish put Madrid a goal up after just 22 seconds.

It was a dreadful error from Valdes, but rather than driving the ball to safety, the next time he received it from his defenders, he calmly controlled it and passed it again. He carried on doing exactly what Guardiola wanted from him, in other words, and Barcelona regained their composure to win the game 3-1.

“The perfect image of this game was that after the goal Victor Valdes continued playing the ball,” said Guardiola afterwards. “Most goalkeepers would boot it, but Victor kept playing the ball. I prefer us to lose the ball like that but give continuity to our play.”

In Guardiola’s teams, goalkeepers are drilled to play with the same short-passing fluency as their outfield team-mates, and that night in Madrid, Guardiola was delighted with what he described as Valdes’ “commitment to our approach”. Building from the back is fundamental to Guardiola’s possession-based philosophy, and his unusual …

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