Colin Sheridan: Inflexible Guardiola must restart his football supercomputer

Plu, why Mack Hansen's post-game honesty was so refreshing this weekend. 

RESET: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola after the Premier League defeat at Villa Park.

It's been a long time since the sight of Manchester City next up on the fixture list of your football team was a good thing. Think, mid 90s. When Niall Quinn was their top scorer, and, after Tony Coton and Andy Dibble, their third choice goalkeeper. Peter Beagrie and Giorgi Kinkladze provided some light entertainment on the wings, while Alan Kernaghan and Keith Curle were comedy gold at the back. They were actually quite an enjoyable team to watch, unless you supported them. 

They were such a non-threatening presence in the league that, when they got relegated in 1996, as a Manchester United fan in the first flushes of my petulant youth, I was actually disappointed, not ecstatic at the demise of a rival. Sport, like life, is cyclical. Everton visit the Etihad on St Stephen's Day to play a team even Uwe Rösler would fancy bagging a brace against. A team with a war chest the size of a small country's GDP, and with a manager who many credit with revolutionising an entire sport. They still possess the most potent attacking weapon in all of football in the guise of Erling Haaland, while, in Jack Grealish and Phil Foden, they boast two of the most inexplicably wasted talents the game has seen. It's such a mess that even Everton will be happy for the road trip. You can only dance with the girls on the dance floor, and right now, City are not dancing. They’re slumped on the coach, scratching themselves.