Manchester City fans can expect more meltdowns from Pep Guardiola this season as the Spaniard battles with his own self-doubting intensity

PEP

If you hire Pep Guardiola you get extreme intensity on the pitch, but you also get exactly the same away from it. 

And sometimes that manifests itself in prickly television interviews with short sharp monosyllabic mutterings that make for uncomfortable viewing.

There were times during Guardiola's four years at the Nou Camp when he came out to post-match interviews with Catalan Television and delivered the same sort of three or four word answers that he gave Sky and the BBC on Monday.

One famous example came after a 5-1 quarter-final win over Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League in 2011. 

The win meant Barcelona were almost assured of a semi-final against Real Madrid but so spiky was Guardiola in the post-match interview that reporter Jordi Grau finished up by saying: 'I see you are not in the mood to talk tonight.' 

Guardiola replied 'no, not really,' and walked away before the camera could zoom-in and take him out of shot.

If he was temperamental with local television at a club where, for the most part, media were wholeheartedly on his side, things were always going to be occasionally bumpy once he went abroad.

This is a coach who, despite winning 20 trophies in eight years, is still ravaged by doubts about his own ability to keep reaching the same standards of achievement.

In four years at Barcelona he won 14 out of a possible 19 cups but he still saw fit to change the way the team played every season for fear of being found out by rival managers. 

And he might never have stayed in the job long enough to succeed had he not felt the overwhelming backing of his players and directors at the time.

In an exclusive interview with Sportsmail last season, Andres Iniesta revealed how he had to give Guardiola a Pep talk at the beginning of his time in charge after the first two matches ended in an away defeat and a home draw.

'Don't worry, boss, we'll win it all. We're on the right path. Carry on like this, OK? We're playing brilliantly, we're enjoying training. Please don't change anything. This year we are going to steamroller everyone. We're doing 'f***ing brilliant,' he admitted telling his manager who was feeling the heat after two matches that had supporters and pundits alike wondering why Barca had not appointed the proven Jose Mourinho instead of him.

It's telling that Iniesta felt Guardiola needed to hear those words of reassurance.

Barca president at the time, Joan Laporta also backed Guardiola every step of the way. If the young coach had asked for William Morris wallpaper and shag pile carpet in the dressing room, Laporta would have made sure he got it.

It was inevitable that when Laporta was replaced with Sandro Rosell, who lacked Laporta's charisma and willingness to work with his coach, he started looking longingly towards the exit.

As well as the self-doubting intensity there is also a large helping of theatre with Guardiola. There is a drama to him that always made him easy for Catalan TV satire show Crackovia to caricature – the actor who played him only had to touch his nose and run his hand over his scalp and he had the impersonation down to a tee.

Unpick the comments made to NBC and there isn't much there that we might not already have sensibly surmised. 'I won't be coaching when I'm 60', he says. 

Well Guardiola will be 46 this month so that's him retiring in 14 years not next week.

'City will be one of my last clubs' he says. Well how many clubs did we think he was going to manage? He will never coach in Spain again. 

He won't go back to Germany or elsewhere in England. So there is maybe a stop off in Italy and then on to international management, which has always appealed.

Qatar would love him to coach them in the 2022 World Cup finals. There is support for his appointment in Brazil and Argentina and he showed an interest in the England job after leaving Barcelona.

So all in all, he revealed he will quit before he's 60 and he'll only manage another couple of club sides. But Guardiola himself gives the whole thing a massive twist of melodrama when he says: 'I'm closing in on the end of my career, I'm sure of it.'

And he added fuel to the flames with the way he addressed questions about the NBC interview after the game. As he darted out of the press conference he might as well have done so carrying a sign reading: 'The End is Nigh'.

Talk to people around him and they say the end is very much not nigh. 

He has only just got started and without a major international tournament next summer it will be easier to fill the squad with more of 'his' players.

For now he probably doesn't have the players to emulate the title successes at Bayern and Barcelona – all of which means that the Monday meltdown might not be the last this season.