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Just How Good Can Pep Guardiola Make This Manchester City Side?

The 19th century Russian writer Alexander Herzen said revolution is invariably frightening, as "the departing world leaves behind it not an heir, but a pregnant widow." The old order is not simply flipped. Before the birth of any new regime, "a long night of chaos and desolation will pass," with the cries of a baby only heard after a nine-month trimester.

In more prosaic terms, nothing changes overnight. There will be fallow periods before the crop.

Talk of revolution is not uncommon in football; patience most certainly is. It is impossible to have one without the other.