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By IAN HERBERT Published: 04: 00 AEDT, 18 December 2024 | Updated: 06: 56 AEDT, 18 December 2024 12 View comments Out there in the real world, beyond the holy church of football, there have been many brilliant, highly innovative individuals who have risen to the top of their fields, been cherished and rewarded for it, and not permitted one moment’s self-pity when the roof started caving in. John Sculley was such a successful executive at Apple that he played a part in Steve Jobs being ousted, yet put market share over innovation and saw things fall apart on his watch. Robert Nakasone built up Toys ‘R’ Us into a monolith but was complacent about digital advances. There were consequences. And that brings us to Pep Guardiola - an individual it has been such a privilege to observe at close quarters these past eight years, who is telling us, in the face of his current elemental difficulties, that he’s not been eating, sleeping and ‘is not good enough’ to solve Manchester City’s problems. Is it heresy to suggest that the public air of melancholy he’s currently exuding - casting himself in the role of tragic hero and even scratching his face until it bleeds - is precious and rather needy? That it can’t be having the remotest positive motivational effect on his players? It had been put to Guardiola by a BBC journalist on Friday that his recent admission of lost appetite and sleep will have ‘shocked’ some people, when he said, ‘I have a certain moral authority - with what happened in my career, ’ he said. Yes, Guardiola indeed was on another level to almost any other football manager. His success is why he’s been able to carry off those little pieces of choreography we’ve seen on the pitch from him after a game over the years, mentoring opposition players and publicly talking his own through their errors, in a way that no other manager would probably dare. Pep Guardiola is a fantastic achiever, but his history does not exonerate him from blame for Manchester City's current malaise The way he is handling this crisis is not beneficial - is his melancholy really that motivational? You could argue he has been casting himself in the role of tragic hero as he and City struggle ‘I’m the master and you are the pupils, ’ he’s seemed to have been saying. He has been aloof and alone, up there on a different cognitive plane. But that ‘moral authority’ is never sacrosanct or immutable in a game like football, which can be the most brutal of levellers, as he is now finding out. Those achievements do not mean Guardiola is immune from blame. He has very much shared in the complacency that City have shown about the challenge that this season’s Premier League competitors might pose. He is as answerable for allowing his squad to age as Jurgen Klopp was when a creaking Liverpool midfield could not mount a credible title defence in 2020-21. City would not have signed Matheus Nunes from Wolves for £53million - on the same day that Cole Palmer left for Chelsea for £45million - without the manager having a very significant say in the matter. Vast spending power of the Manchester City kind can perhaps be too much of a good thing. These unpleasant little realities are not part of Guardiola’s own narrative curation of this fall, in which he casts himself as a man at the mercy of events. ‘The soul and spirit are there but we are sad, ’ he said on Friday, detailing injuries and fixture schedules which had him thinking that his poor club might need a 45 or 50-player squad to deal with the workload. ‘It’s time to survive. Survive. Stay there. Be close than ever. ’ He’s not the only one with superhero powers to find moments like this utterly alien. Many a footballing Superman has arrived in our football, unaccustomed to failure, wondering to do when exposed to its Kryptonite. Ruud Gullit had been at Newcastle barely a year when the fall came, rapid and painful, with nothing to catch him he as careered down the hill. Guardiola’s success affords him far more protection than that. He knows that Manchester City - quite rightly - would never usher him to the door. Any offer he might make to resign his position and leave the club would carry no risk of it being accepted. He knows that. It would only be a play. Another piece of theatre. City will go big on backing him in the January window, with four new players anticipated – an indication that the club believe they will escape heavy punishment on the Premier League’s 115 charges. Any offer to resign would be purely theatre because Manchester City would not accept it Guardiola would have had a say in Cole Palmer's exit, which now looks like a mistake  He cannot give his players a psychological get-out by admitting 'I'm not good enough'  Midfield is the priority, with a back-up striker, centre back and right back. The requirement from Guardiola is to step up, get a grip and drive those players who have stopped pressing with the same intensity to old levels, or else identify those who can step up and do the same at City. He can start by not moping and not giving them the subliminal psychological get-out he offered when telling my colleague Ian Ladyman on Sunday night: ‘I’m the boss, I’m the manager and I’m not good enough. It’s as simple as that. ’ Hardly commanding leadership in adversity. Neither Sculley nor Nakasone had press conferences to curate their own struggles and neither, incidentally, survived their catastrophes. A fate like theirs will not befall Guardiola, who will always be viewed as a managerial genius. But this moment requires a different kind of leadership. It’s about him – but not all about him. Rashford must ditch 'advisers' The decline of Marcus Rashford has broken so many hearts. He’s been a fixture in my nine-year-old grandson’s fantasy football team this season, despite everything, and the many Manchester United posters on our boy’s bedroom wall include a dedicated Rashford section which will be there long after he has gone.   Rashford said on Tuesday that he has no ‘hard feelings’ for United, having resigned himself to leaving. His anger should be directed at the godforsaken individuals currently ‘advising’ him.   Get rid of them, restore positive influences, or it will be the same story of decline for him at any other club.   Credit to Ruben Amorim for telling Marcus Rashford what he needs to hear - it could get the best out of him  USA's golf greed  I spent 15 minutes in the great Ed Moses’ company at the Laureus Awards in Madrid this summer – long enough for him to argue, with a passion, that it was right to start paying prize money to Olympic athletes who won medals, to raise up those who desperately need the money. What a contrast to the dismal, vastly remunerated golfers of the USA golfers who, it’s just been confirmed, will pick up £400, 000 each for playing the Ryder Cup, while the Europeans continue playing for the love of the game. Day tickets for the Long Island event are $750. Even practice day tickets are priced at $255. 27. The Americans just don’t see how repugnant they look. Chasing Salah is tough to beat It's been a stellar year for sports books. Chasing Salah, a biography of the player by Simon Hughes, takes some beating, for me. I’ve also just started A Striking Summer, Stephen Brenkley’s depiction of the extraordinary 1926 Ashes, staged in England against the backdrop of the General Strike and the after-effects of the First World War. Revolution was in the air but cricket salved the wounds that summer. I’ll write more about the book here but it’s a beautiful way to set up 2025, an Ashes year. Over the summer Ed Moses argued passionately for Olympic medallists just to be paid - meanwhile, the USA's Ryder Cup golfers will get £400, 000 just for competing  Chasing Salah by Simon Hughes will take some beating for me among sports books this year 'Til next year! There will be no published column from me next week so it will be New Year’s Eve when I next see you. Thanks for all your emails and messages throughout the year and please keep them coming.   Our discussions and debates beyond the pages have been excellent, whether we happen to agree or not. A Happy Christmas and peaceful New Year to you all. Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group