Lee Dixon has questioned how Pep Guardiola would fare if he had to manage lesser players after Manchester City moved 10 points clear at the top of the Premier League table.
Guardiola is a world-renowned manager due to his tactical insight, detailed coaching, and development of individual players and systemic styles and approaches.
However, his first first-team job was at Barcelona. He then moved to Bayern Munich before arriving in Manchester. Never has he managed a poor team.
Guardiola has also always spent extensively, including and especially at City, repeatedly spending among the most in world football to ensure that he has the best squad to work with.
And after Wednesday's 3-1 win over Everton, which moved City 10 points clear at the top and to within touching distance of the Premier League title, Dixon questioned what he could do if he was handed a substandard squad after former Bournemouth boss Eddie Howe praised the Spaniard.
"I think with Pep Guardiola, he continually evolves," Howe said while working as a pundit on Amazon Sport Prime. "I don't think he ever stands still and thinks: 'We've cracked it. This is the team, this is the system, I'm going to stay with this for a while'.
"You can see even in the interviews, he's thinking - thinking about the next game and, 'can I do this with this player?' I think that's what makes him the complete manager that he is. He's never satisfied.
"He's a perfectionist and he wants to find perfection. I don't think he'll ever find it but he's working towards it."
Dixon then replied: "But also you do have to say, Eddie, at the three clubs he's been at, he's had the best players in the world to work with.
"He's asking really intelligent, talented footballers to do jobs and he is a forward-thinking coach - but it would be interesting to see what he would do with the lesser players - whether he'd be able to manage them and put them in formations like playing a left-back in the middle of midfield. Interesting."
To sum up the thought experiment, Michael Owen concluded: "I doubt we'll ever find that out, will we?!"
City were dominant against Everton, with goals from Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez.
They have now won 17 successive matches in all competitions, a new English record, and are still fighting in all four competitions having qualified for the final and quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup and FA Cup respectively.
