Pep Guardiola is betraying his principles by signing Gianluigi Donnarumma - but Man City needed to go back to basics after Ederson's decline

Victor Valdes will never forget his first conversation with Pep Guardiola. He had been Barcelona's goalkeeper for years and had already won a Champions League and a couple of La Liga titles, but the new, rookie coach immediately challenged everything Valdes thought he knew about football.

The legendary Barca goalkeeper told the documentary 'Take the ball, pass the ball': "He [Guardiola] had a tactics board with two small magnets on either side of the goal, just outside of the box. He said 'Do you know which players these two are? These are your centre-backs.' I had no idea what he was talking about; it sounded like he was talking Chinese. And he said 'When you’ve got the ball, this is where I want them to be. You’ll pass to them, and it’s from here that we’ll build the play'. I thought he was crazy.'"

Valdes put Guardiola's play-out-from-the-back ideas into practice and even when it led to him conceding costly goals against Real Madrid, he kept doing it, earning praise from Xavi Hernandez for "not forgetting our philosophy". Valdes' inferior shot-stopping qualities meant he never overhauled Iker Casillas as Spain's No.1, but he helped Guardiola conquer the world with Barcelona. When the coach left for Bayern Munich, he took the same approach with Manuel Neuer, who was even better with his feet as well as being a more reliable shot-stopper than Valdes.

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When Guardiola joined Manchester City in 2016, he was so convinced he needed a ball-playing goalkeeper that he rooted out club legend and fan favourite Joe Hart, at first with disastrous consequences as his replacement, Claudio Bravo, flopped, but then for the better when Guardiola landed Ederson.

The Brazil international is now set to leave the Etihad Stadium after eight seasons and with six Premier League winners medals around his neck, but Guardiola's choice to replace Ederson with Gianluigi Donnarumma has turned heads across football, with many observers wondering whether the coach has abandoned his principles.

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