Man City has been issued a stern reminder of the replacement of Pep Guardiola, which is described as “going to happen.”

It had been a little over a year since Pep Guardiola made some strong claims about Vincent Kompany. At that time, Manchester City played Burnley.

It seems like a long time ago that Vincent Kompany was being talked about as a possible future player for Manchester City.

After all he has done, having Kompany lead the team at the Etihad would be a dream come true for the club and the fans. There is a statue of him outside the East Stand, after all. This wasn’t just a wish. More than once, Pep Guardiola said that Kompany becoming City manager “is going to happen.”

“He will come back eventually,” he said. “Becoming manager of City was always meant to be his fate.” It is going to happen. It will happen, but I don’t know when.

At that time, Kompany was leading Burnley to an amazing return to the Premier League in his first season in charge, as they dominated the Championship with great football. They also made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the FA Cup and tied Manchester City there.

Even though it sounds silly since they lost 6-0, Burnley were really, really good. City was in great shape and on track to win the Treble, but Burnley gave them more trouble in the first half hour than RB Leipzig did a few days earlier. Even though Erling Haaland beat Kompany up, he left the Etihad that day with even more confidence.

That stock is much lower now than it was a year ago. With just 17 points from 29 games, Burnley is on track to be relegated back to the Championship. They didn’t look ready for the first game of the season against City, and things haven’t gotten much better yet.

It should be clear that Kompany is working in dangerous conditions since he seems to be pretty safe at his job. In order to make the best team possible, the former leader of City has had to put together a group of inexperienced players in a new league where teams are losing tens or hundreds of millions of pounds.

City will be aware of that, and they won’t give up on him just because Burnley has had a rough season. Guardiola got good advice from Kompany before the game and again before City signed Jeremy Doku, and those tips helped a lot.

There would be a lot less noise about Kompany, though, if you were making a list of possible Guardiola replacements this March. Since then, Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi has been getting a lot of attention. Ange Postecoglou is building on a strong resume that includes wins won in the City Football Group, and Xabi Alonso was one of Guardiola’s best students.