Pep Guardiola reportedly contacted Alexis Sanchez after the game against West Ham to ask him to sign for Manchester City according to a report in El Mercurio today.

If true [edit, it’s not true, Guardiola has already denied it], Guardiola, who showed he had no problem tapping up players when he was with Barcelona, still seems to have absolutely no issue with doing whatever the hell he wants.

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Reports in Spain also claim that the City manager likes to speak to players himself to convince them to join him, and it is how they landed Claudio Bravo after he contacted Ter Stegen who said no.

Let me add again for those at the back who might be a bit hard of hearing THIS IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL!

Article 18, paragraph 3 of FIFA’s own regulations state that this is only allowed to happen if the player has just six months remaining on his contract or is a free agent. Neither of those apply to Sanchez (and the six month rule is only for foreign clubs).

We have only the media’s word that this happened and it could all be more agent games rather than anything else.

But the fact that we cannot dismiss it out of hand reminds you of of what you already know about Guardiola and how he likes to conduct his ‘business.’

This is a developing story and we are digging into it more to see what else we can find and to try and verify the validity of the story. Please check back.