So Pep Guardiola has confirmed that his next job is in England.

And the British media are falling over themselves in excitement.

And if that wasn’t enough he hasn’t actually declared which team that is yet, and has also stated that he hasn’t signed anything with any team at this moment in time.

That has made the media speculate that his final destination could be any of the Top 4 sides in England, including Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal.

Let’s go through the different options Pep is “perceived” to have:

Team: Manchester City
Chances of Arriving: 95%

This is his most likely destination, and although nothing has been signed or confirmed yet, this is most likely down to the fact that they don’t want to disrespect Manuel Pellegrini who is concentrating on trying to achieve European and domestic success this season.

Manchester City have Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain already at the club and they know Guardiola extremely well from their days at Barcelona. Everything is in place for Pep – a strong squad with talented attacking players, no shortage of money in the transfer market, excellent facilities and infrastructure – and an impressive stadium with a big capacity (yes the atmosphere can be awful but he doesn’t know that).

Of course he’s officially going to say he’s not sure where he’ll end up at the moment because there’s still 5 months of the season to go and the last thing Manchester City want is something to destabilise their season.

I would say Guardiola is a dead cert to end up at Manchester City.

Team: Manchester United
Chances of Arriving: 10%

The media are pointing to a couple of poor seasons under David Moyes and Louis Van Gaal as reasons why Manchester United would be desperate to bring in the talented coach and I’m sure they would love Guardiola at the club – but I can’t see it happening myself.

Yes, they have the history and are undoubtedly one of the biggest teams in English football, but I just see Pep Guardiola looking at that squad and thinking it needs too much work. At Barcelona, he already inherited a fantastic group of players and the same thing happened at Bayern Munich. Manchester United’s squad needs a massive overhaul and with Guardiola only staying at a club for 2/3 seasons (much like Mourinho) he wouldn’t be looking for a long term project.

He would be great for United but sadly for them, it’s all pie in the sky I’m afraid.

Team: Chelsea
Chances of Arriving: 20%

For me, the only other real threat to Manchester City is Chelsea. They have the money, they have the location and they have the basis of a good squad.

Roman Abramovich would pretty much had over a blank cheque to get Pep Guardiola at Chelsea and would allow him to strengthen the squad however he wanted. Yes, the current squad is weaker than Manchester City’s and the defence needs a lot of work but it’s nothing a few big signings couldn’t fix.

In terms of location, London is a big factor in a lot of Premier League moves (as Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Özil can testify) and there’s no doubt that Pep and his family would love the London life. But is that enough?

People are saying that Guardiola might be put off by Chelsea’s hire and fire mentality when it comes to managers but that hasn’t put off many of the biggest managerial names in the world, including Jose Mourinho, Carlo…

So you never know…

Team: Arsenal
Chance of Arriving: 5%

It seems like the perfect fit doesn’t it?

Arsenal are in London which would be great for Guardiola, and out of the 4 clubs Arsenal play the most attractive football – and would theoretically be the easiest team to implement his style of play on.

But let’s be realistic for a minute.

If it ever did happen, Guardiola would be under Arsene Wenger’s spotlight as there’s no way the Frenchman would leave the club and would most likely be moved to a Director of Football role.

There would be far too many restrictions under Pep for it to even be a possibility so unfortunately it’s a no go. And with Arsenal’s insistence on continuity and consistency then employing a manager for a 3 to 4 season stint makes no sense.

Also, the problem is the budget Guardiola has to spend. While Arsenal have a lot of money there’s no way they would authorise £150 million plus spending in a single summer. In recent times we’ve spent big (well, big for us anyway) but that’s been over a few years.

Unless Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea end up being taken away by aliens in some sort of intergalactic war and Arsenal are the only viable option remaining, then he won’t be coming to Arsenal.

So Pep Guardiola has confirmed that his next job is in England.

And the British media are falling over themselves in excitement.

And if that wasn’t enough he hasn’t actually declared which team that is yet, and has also stated that he hasn’t signed anything with any team at this moment in time.

That has made the media speculate that his final destination could be any of the Top 4 sides in England, including Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal.

Let’s go through the different options Pep is “perceived” to have… [Read more >>]

Arsenal have been in excellent form recently – but it came to an abrupt end yesterday when we travelled to St Mary’s and lost 4-0.

As usual after an Arsenal defeat, the Twittersphere went mental, with some Arsenal fans ridiculously calling for Arsene to resign.

We’ve done fantastically well of late – with wins over Olympiakos and Manchester City the highlights. Arsenal have been overconfident in my eyes recently so a kick up the back side does us no harm.

Arsenal always put in a response after a defeat so against Bournemouth tomorrow I expect a result. We’re at home which is a big plus and we’ve got Newcastle after that at home and then Sunderland away – so we should in theory be able to get our season kick-started again with a decent run of wins.

Then we have Liverpool and Stoke both away, so that will give us a barometer of how we are this season.

Leicester City lost against Liverpool which was a big favour for us and on Tuesday Leicester host Manchester City so they will knock points off each other.

So a win against Bournemouth will give us a good base to re-ignite our campaign.

No team is perfect and it is impossible to expect Arsenal to put in an excellent performance in every single game. We were poor against Southampton and while they say playing badly and winning matches is a sign of champions, along with our poor performance we were unlucky.

Martina scored a goal which was ridiculous, and while it was great for him I’m pretty sure if he tried that 100 more times it wouldn’t have flew in like it did yesterday. The second goal was questionable with Long’s trip on Koscielny and after that we collapsed. Yes, we were utterly shite but at 0-0 or even losing at 1-0 there’s always a chance of nicking something to get back into the game.

So there we are. After an apparently ‘disastrous’ defeat to Southampton we are still second in the Premier League, only two points off Leicester City who have yet to go to Old Trafford, The Emirates, The Etihad, White Hart Lane, Stamford Bridge and only just went to Anfield yesterday (and lost).

2016 can be a massive year for Arsenal and I believe.

Leicester City top the Premier League table after beating Chelsea 2-1 last night, with goals from Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez (who else?).

Chelsea however sit in 16th position with 14 points, one point away from the relegation zone.

So why are Chelsea so awful this season?

It’s a strange question that I can’t answer and one that has me confused. But I suppose if we did know the answer then Mourinho is intelligent and experienced enough to sort it out.

We’ve heard so many times that Jose Mourinho is the greatest manager that ever lived – and huge legends of the game such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wesley Sneijder, Didier Drogba, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Marco Materazzi, Xabi Alonso amongst countless others have heaped praise on the Portuguese manager.

His record, as hard as it is to admit, is phenomenal with Mourinho finding success at every club he has managed – and within one or two seasons as well. So why is he finding it so hard at the moment?

He has a massive reputation and is respected by some of the biggest names in football. Chelsea only won the Premier League last season so it would be hard to imagine that he’s suddenly lost the respect of the dressing room overnight – and even though that’s cited as the main reason for Chelsea’s slump – surely they can’t nose dive as quickly as they have in the league.

He had the situation with Eva Carneiro and while that whole episode was unsavoury to say the least, it would be hard to imagine that all of the players would sudden turn against a man who has managed to much success and delivered a successful Premier League campaign the season before – or are football players as fickle as that?

Yes, Mourinho was completely out of order in that whole saga and I’m not excusing his actions one bit, but if you’re sitting in the dressing room then surely you’re going to follow the manager? Not support him necessarily (he was completely in the wrong) but this is a man that wields so much power in the game. It’s like crossing Alex Ferguson or Brian Clough in their managerial prime – you’d be stupid to do so.

I can’t comment specifically on the performances because I make a habit of avoiding them whenever possible but it seems strange that they can lose to lower league opposition on a regular basis but beat Arsenal. But I suppose that’s down to the players “turning up” for a big game.

I’ve also heard that Mourinho is a “phenomenal man-manager”, knows exactly to get the best out of players and that his personal relationship with the players is comparable to an unbreakable bond. As previously mentioned Zlatan Ibrahimovic loves Mourinho and there’s that famous footage when Marco Materazzi was caught crying in Mourinho’s arms as it was announced he would be leaving for Real Madrid.

I just find it extremely strange to see how a manager like Mourinho is so adored by a club and their players has suddenly lost his magic touch. Has he turned into a terrible manager overnight? Surely not.

Are the Chelsea players too old? Perhaps but not everyone in that squad is over the hill and their team is filled with world class talent and shouldn’t be hovering over the relegation zone. And surely a club with their resources can find a player who can do a job? Isn’t that what youth teams and reserve sides are for?

So overall it is a very strange scenario which is equally very confusing. Surely if some players aren’t playing for you then you blood some young talent and send a message to the rest of the team? It would be hard to imagine Arsene Wenger putting up with a player who is lacking in effort and he would be more than happy to blood a young, hungry player instead.

So why do you think Chelsea and Mourinho are struggling so badly? And can they actually turn this all around??

The worst possible draw was Barcelona and in typical Arsenal fashion, that’s what we got.

The outlook looks bleak. They have Messi, Suarez and Neymar (as if you didn’t know already) who are in my opinion, possibly the greatest attacking combination for the last 30 years. Messi is Messi, a phenomenon, Suarez is unbelievably good and Neymar is quality as well. Any defence would struggle against them and to compound matters we’re missing Francis Coquelin.

So the big question is, are they unbeatable?

Well let’s look at their season so far.

In La Liga, they’ve played 15 games, winning 11, drawing 2 and losing 2. The two defeats were against Celta Vigo (4-1) and Sevilla (2-1), and their last defeat was at the start of October and they are currently on a 8 game unbeaten run.

Of those 8 games, they’ve racked up 24 goals, only conceding 6. However, they have drawn their latest two league games, drawing against Valencia and Deportivo La Coruna, so possibly some hope there.

In the Champions League, they are unsurprisingly unbeaten, winning 4 games and drawing 2, resulting in an overall goal difference of 11 (scoring 15 and conceding 4). Their highlight in the group stages was a 6-1 win over AS Roma.

So Barcelona look decent this season. But can Arsenal beat them over two legs? It’s difficult not to feel a bit pessimistic at the moment but I suppose there is a glimmer of hope.

We all know about the great escape when it comes to the Champions League but Arsenal also top their domestic league, winning 10, drawing 3 and losing 3 of their 16 Premier League fixtures so far.

Arsenal have it all stacked against them, with injuries in key areas so it will be vital that Alexis Sanchez is fit for those two games. Santi Cazorla and Francis Coquelin look like they are going to be short for the Barcelona games so Aaron Ramsey and possibly Mathiew Flamini might be our central midfield pairing. Jack Wilshere who was so good against Barcelona when we won 2-1 at home a few seasons ago would be a massive boost if he regains fitness by February.

Arsene Wenger has shown to be able to pull out spectacular results in the past against big sides (Real Madrid, Juventus, Barcelona, Bayern Munich just to name a few) but two legs against Barcelona is a mammoth task.

So can Arsenal somehow pull it off?

Leave your comments in the section below and make sure you vote!