On Saturday, City travel to the Hawthorns, to play Tony Pulis' West Bromwich Albion.
This will be the greatest stylistic contrast of the Premier League season, and perhaps one of the greatest in Premier League history too. It's difficult to think of two more opposing managers than Guardiola and Tony Pulis: the former a young, cultured, smartly dressed footballing philosopher, the other a back-to-basics veteran who dresses in tracksuit and baseball cap, and tells his players that the opposition don't like it up them.
Well, there's slightly more to it than that. Pulis is a highly effective training ground coach, and regularly assembles amongst the most settled, organized and miserly defences in the Premier League. There are never gaps between the four defenders, while the midfield screens the backline excellently, generally forcing the opposition to go wide.
If the opposition is compelled to cross the ball, Pulis' players are happy coping with aerial balls - although he's often used a specialist full-back this season, it's not uncommon for Pulis to field a defence featuring four natural centre-backs, who play extremely narrow and defend the width of the penalty box manfully. Last season, Pulis also experimented with centre-back Jonny Evans in a midfield role, determined to get aerial power and defensive solidity in the team wherever possible.
Of course, this considerably boosts West Brom's performance at set-piece situations, too - both defending and attacking. They've already scored four goals from dead ball situations this season, the most in the Premier League.
While Pulis is determined to play centre-backs in other positions, Guardiola is determined to field players from other positions at centre-back. He's used the likes of Aleksandar Kolarov and Gael Clichy in the middle this season, and is entirely happy to deploy John Stones, whose main weakness is defending, as a defender.