Pep Guardiola is one of the best managers around but he is guilty of overcomplicating things at Manchester City right now.

Some of his decisions lately have been really strange and had it been any other manager, the fans would have been going bananas by now.

Don’t get me wrong: I like Pep and his record speaks for itself but that doesn’t mean he isn’t prone to making mistakes like the rest of us.

He started well at City but it feels like lately players are being used in the wrong positions. Pablo Zabaleta isn’t a midfielder. Pep wants full‑backs to come inside like he did with Philipp Lahm at Bayern but Lahm was good on the ball so he could handle it.

Zabaleta is suddenly receiving balls in positions he isn’t used to, getting it with his back to the opposition like a midfielder. He hasn’t got the awareness to deal with that challenge.

Midfielders at the top clubs have to be fantastic footballers with eyes in the back of their head because the game is going on all around them. And in the Premier League, the pace of the game is even quicker so that vision is all-important. When you play right-back, the game is in front of you and you are sideways on to that area of the pitch so your individual role is simpler.

I go and watch my grandkids play on a Sunday and the manager swaps them into different positions in each quarter of the match. That’s great because you are trying to teach them the game. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Guardiola was trying to teach a bunch of professionals different positions.

Fair enough, City ground out a win against Watford last night and Claudio Bravo, who has come in for a lot of stick, pulled off a smart stop to deny Etienne Capoue.

But if City continue to struggle, Pep’s decision to bomb out Joe Hart for Bravo will be questioned.

His treatment of Yaya Toure has been strange given he came in after ages out in the cold, scored two goals and has barely played since.

If that was an Englishman or a foreign manager making his way in the game, people would be asking ‘who is this guy and what’s he playing at?’ But because it is Pep and his record tells you he usually gets it right, nobody is kicking off too much. Maybe his way will pay off. It would be stupid to think a man like Guardiola isn’t capable of it but at the moment, teams have worked out how to play against them.

City want to play out from the back all the time but Tottenham showed how to nullify them earlier on the season. Spurs pressed high up the pitch, City couldn’t get out and they ended up just booting it anywhere to get it out of the danger area.

They keep trying to play but only keep putting themselves in trouble. Leicester did it well, too. The idea is to force them to kick it long because they have nobody up front — even when Sergio Aguero is playing — who can win the majority of high balls in the air so you win the header and regain possession.

Arsenal should press them high and Alexis Sanchez is perfectly suited to that given his work-rate and pace.

Sanchez scored again at Everton and his contract situation along with Mesut Ozil’s is becoming a saga.

Arsenal are going to have to pay top dollar to keep them because there isn’t much loyalty in the game anymore. They won’t sign for £100,000 a week less than they could earn somewhere else and although what they are demanding is bonkers to the man in the street, it is the going market rate: they want to be paid the same as the best in England because they are among the best in England.

The Arsenal players with expiring contracts 5 show all The Arsenal players with expiring contracts 1/5 The Arsenal players with 14 months or fewer left on their contracts... Arsenal FC via Getty Images 2/5 Alexis Sanchez AFP/Getty Images 3/5 Mesut Ozil REUTERS 4/5 Santi Cazorla David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images 5/5 Jack Wilshere Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images 1/5 The Arsenal players with 14 months or fewer left on their contracts... Arsenal FC via Getty Images 2/5 Alexis Sanchez AFP/Getty Images 3/5 Mesut Ozil REUTERS 4/5 Santi Cazorla David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images 5/5 Jack Wilshere Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images

There are a lot of players out there earning over £200,000 a week who aren’t as good as them, that’s for sure. If I was in Arsene Wenger’s position, I’d push for the club to pay the highest salary in the Premier League. The fans pay the highest prices, they don’t have the debt they used to and the cost of replacing those two players in their prime like that would be massive.

Sanchez will hassle City’s defenders so they will have a big problem. City have got to be able to mix it up. If teams constantly press your defenders, sometimes you need to clip it forward 40 or 50 yards so you can exploit the spaces your opponents have left in behind and turn them around.

Sunday is a tough game to call. If Guardiola picks a team that makes some sort of sense, I’d probably just favour City even without Aguero.