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

Talk of revolution is not uncommon in football; patience most certainly is. It is impossible to have one without the other. Football supporters want to know the sex of a child before the pee on the pregnancy test has dried.

As a breed, we are inherently impatient. If revolution can't be achieved in four games it's usually shelved at the behest of guerilla rebels, shouting in car parks under the ruse of being YouTube fan channels.

Last season Pep Guardiola was the pregnant widow, hen-pecked and harangued in a half-formed new world. Now he is the proud father.

On Saturday, after his Manchester City side put seven past Stoke City, it would not have been a surprise had he pulled out his phone to show the assembled press endless photographs of his players kicking leaves in the garden, taking first steps or blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

"Look, here's a cute one of Fabian Delph two-footing his potty," he'd chuckle, ignoring a fan-boy question of whether Kevin De Bruyne is a No. 8 or a Raumdeuter, an interpreter of space.

He's right to be proud. Even withstanding a sample size of data comprising just eight Premier League matches, City are currently as close as it gets to realising the most personal of visions.

Just a cursory look at the numbers in comparison to his La Liga and UEFA Champions League-winning Barcelona team of 2011/12—widely regarded to be one of the best club sides ever—and the Bayern Munich outfit that won the Bundesliga by 10 points in his final season in Germany, paints a picture of a City side in full working order. There's a cigarette paper between all three of them.

City currently average 64.9 per cent possession with a pass-completion rate of 89.4 per cent. Across Europe's top five leagues, no side has enjoyed more of the ball than City.

Barcelona's stats from 2011/12 read 67.4 per cent possession and 89.6 per cent pass completion, with Bayern (2015/16) 66.4 per cent possession and 88 per cent pass completion. City's average of 19.4 shots per game betters both Barcelona (15.8) and Bayern (18.4).

To borrow a Wengerism, to watch City is to concede on a purely aesthetic level Guardiola has the prettiest wife at home. Crunch the numbers and it turns out she's the smartest too.

City also top Europe in terms of aerial duels won. Somewhat of a surprise given Guardiola almost certainly thinks heading is something common people do.

There is little doubt this is now Guardiola's club, just as Sheikh Mansour had always intended from the moment he appointed former Barcelona alumni Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano as director of football and chief executive officer, respectively, in 2012.

Mansour could not have made Guardiola feel any more wanted had he shipped over Gaudi's Sagrada Familia to be used as the club's canteen.

As the Guardian's resident football and money man David Conn somewhat saltily put it at the weekend, at a cost of £1.2 billion, it's hardly jumpers-for-goalposts stuff:

Still, given there is more chance of affecting the course of the tide than the game's relationship with money, to not enjoy the football City are playing because of how much it cost to get there feels like an acute case of cutting off one's nose to spite the face. There are a fair few of us who have been walking around with beaks in our pocket for a while now.

With each passing game those that took a contrarian position on a man who has won it all, with Lionel Messi holding one hand and Philipp Lahm the other we'd sneer, must concede to being the type of fool who probably would have laughed at Christopher Columbus' claim the world is round.

In less civilised societies, those who questioned whether Guardiola is an art-for-art's-sake kind of a guy—a conceptualist so far up himself when he smiles that his buttocks bare teeth—would not be allowed admission into any ground without first donning a dunce's hat. For press conferences we'd be made to wear a bell. That said, I'd still rather chance a scarecrow than Claudio Bravo.

It was never really about Guardiola, anyhow. More his groupies, the evangelical and pious, perpetually affronted by the idea opposition teams might try to stop his from playing. Presumably instead of blithely lying down like a nude grateful to be painted by a master craftsman.

Jose Mourinho parking the bus for a vast majority is an eyesore, but then one man's concrete monstrosity is another's brutalist tour de force. When someone, or something, is called ugly often enough it can soon start to take on an unexpected, almost abstract beauty.

Pontificating about the "right way to play," as so many are prone to do, invariably gives the "wrong way to play" a certain cachet. 

Just before Saturday lunchtime's El Crapico between Liverpool and Manchester United, the journalist Oliver Holt took to Twitter to proclaim his love of all things Anfield. By the end, it sounded as though he'd rather have been anywhere else.

Mourinho's conservatism had got to him. Rattled like Guardiola in his final year in Spain, in his report for the Mail on Sunday he branded United's manager the "enemy of football." Though a tad hysterical, it was refreshing to see a powerful white man taken to task for the first time in the publication's history. 

If Mourinho is the enemy of football, then Guardiola is looking its likeliest saviour. Without wishing to outdo Holt on the hysteria front, the football Manchester City are playing this season is from another dimension.

At their current scoring rate, they are on course to finish the campaign with 137 goals. In their last 15 matches, bridging the end of last season with the start of this, they have won 14 at an aggregate of 52-7.

Tuesday night's game at the Etihad Stadium against a Napoli side that has won all eight of its Serie A matches, pitches together arguably the two most in-form teams in Europe. 

Football's dark knight Mourinho was at the helm at Real Madrid, when they set a La Liga goalscoring record with 121 in 2011/12. It's going to kill Guardiola acolytes when Mourinho eventually takes off his mask and confesses to being Pep's father.

Chelsea in 2009/10 and City, with Manuel Pellegrini's underrated title winners of 2013/14 clocking up 102 goals, are the only members of the Premier League 100 Club. That term was also the last time City won seven and drew one of their first eight matches.

Prior to the international break, City's 1-0 win at Chelsea was a chin-stroking masterclass in how to control a match. It was the type of learned performance that in time will become a staple lesson taught on football's syllabus.

What is so ominous for City's rivals is how they have won different types of matches by adopting different guises. They were patient at Brighton & Hove Albion, cute against Chelsea, respectful to Shakhtar Donetsk, ruthless against Liverpool, emphatic against everyone else.

If the fare served at Stamford Bridge was sophisticated Michelin star quality, then Saturday at the Etihad was the best burger you've ever had. A visceral bender of an experience that left even those who approach a bun with a knife and fork, licking grease off their hands without a care in the world over who might be watching. 

Former City favourite Paul Lake, the venerated author of I'm Not Really Here, was more I'm Bloody Glad To Be Here, as he described it on Twitter as "probably the most entertaining football I've ever seen." It really was that good.

When a "Keep Moving" message flashed up on an advertising hoarding on Saturday, it was as though Guardiola was indulging in some kind of Orwellian-style mind control. City's players heeded the message regardless, and by the end, Stoke's looked so knackered it seemed plausible they had been playing continuously since 1984.

To score seven is one thing, to score seven of such quality is another thing altogether. Collectively they could have been hung in a gallery and passed for a cohesive exhibition. Fade out the shirts and faces and it would still be possible to instantly recognise Guardiola as the auteur. Other sides will score similar goals this season, but they will be anomalies, a meat dish on a vegetarian menu.

In the process, City became the first team to score five or more goals in three consecutive top-flight home matches in the same season since Tottenham Hotspur in 1950/51 (Chelsea under Carlo Ancelotti did it across two seasons in 2009/10 and 2010/11). The 29 they have scored in eight league games so far matches a record set by Everton back in 1894/5.

We need to talk about Kevin. Since his City bow in September 2015, De Bruyne has provided 32 assists in the Premier League, more than any other player. 

On his 100th appearance for the club, the Belgian put in a typically frictionless shift. He was so far ahead of anyone else on the pitch in terms of finding space he could have worn slippers without having to worry about stray studs.

The question is now less whether he is the best midfielder in the Premier League, than the world. When he was withdraw on 66 minutes having had a significant hand in five of the six goals City had scored by that point, the only right and proper thing to do would have been to hand him the gate receipts. A rousing standing ovation had to suffice.

"Kevin De Bruyne is head and shoulders above any player in the Premier League," was Stoke boss Mark Hughes' assessment on Sky Sports, delivered with the weary grace of a guest on a talk show who knows they have only been invited on because they have something to say about someone more important.

When German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer arrived at the idea that "talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see," he probably never envisaged its most common usage would be for memes involving Paul Scholes. Partisan City supporters may not wish to borrow from their neighbour's in-house philosopher, but it describes De Bruyne's unique talent to a tee.

Freeze frame his no-look reverse pass for Leroy Sane, culminating in Raheem Sterling tapping-in for City's second, and no less than five Stoke players are taken out of the game by a ball that travels no more than five yards or so. Apparently it counts as a pre-assist, as does his role in City's first and fifth goals. 

It's pretty much impossible to overstate just how well he is playing. Try watching either of his "proper" assists for Gabriel Jesus and Sane without emitting a snort of involuntary laughter. You can't. The weight he puts on passes transcends them into an art form. To make something so outrageously difficult look so simple is why, if he keeps progressing in the same way, there is nothing to stop him reaching the level of Xavi or Andres Iniesta.

"I am a manager but I'm a spectator, too, you have to enjoy it. So in that moment everyone expected Kevin to shoot—you don't expect him to pass back into the same position he received the ball from," Guardiola said, per the Telegraph.

"He understands the game. Normally, that kind of player doesn't perform the actions needed to be aggressive, to win the ball, and set the right tempo. He does."

The temptation for opposition managers will be to try to stop City at their source by designating someone to sit on De Bruyne and press him as high up the pitch as possible. It's probably easier to get within striking distance of Floyd Mayweather than De Bruyne, but even if his influence is somehow nullified, what about the rest of them?

Sergio Aguero has six goals, three assists; Jesus six goals, one assist; Sterling six goals, two assists; Sane four goals, three assists; David Silva one goal, six assists; De Bruyne one goal, five assists. That's after eight games.

Guardiola has barely unwrapped Bernardo Silva, easing him into English football as one might a pair of luxury cashmere socks that seem almost too nice to use. Before long he will be given his head too, and City will be even more unplayable as an attacking force.

When Guardiola left Barcelona after winning 14 from a possible 19 trophies, his friend, mentor and one-time manager Johan Cruyff spoke of how his protege may find freeing himself from the past the hardest challenge of his career, per MailOnline:

"I was lucky, when I left Barcelona I only had 10 years or so ahead of me, he has the best part of his career still to go, in which he will have to live up to what he has achieved at Barcelona."

While Bayern always felt like a marriage of convenience that was never going to compete with his first love, there's a growing sense Guardiola is starting to feel City might just be the one.

In years to come when history has forgotten it, to claim a seismic moment in Guardiola's career arrived in a home game against Stoke will probably evoke accusations of deliberate obfuscation.

However, for those in attendance, it may be wise to put matchday tickets in a shoebox until future generations are ready to be enraptured by tales of what passed when the twitchy bald man from Spain came over to Manchester to spearhead the revolution.

All statistics provided by WhoScored.com unless otherwise stated