Pep Guardiola gives hint of long-term commitment to Manchester City after buying flat in city centre

Pep Guardiola is set to be offered a long-term contract extension at the end of this season

Manchester City are hopeful of tying Pep Guardiola down to a long-term contract (Getty)

Pep Guardiola has demonstrated his clearest long-term commitment yet to Manchester City after it was revealed he bought a flat near the city centre.

Guardiola is set to be offered a long-term contract extension at the end of this season, with the club’s owners in Abu Dhabi keen to build a dynasty similar to the one created by Sir Alex Ferguson during his 26-and-a-half years in charge at Manchester United.

The City manager is halfway through the three-year contract he signed before arriving at the Etihad Stadium in July 2016, and the club are hopeful that he will agree to a lengthy extension.

Land Registry documents show that Guardiola paid £2.7m in March for his flat in the City Suites complex in Salford, a short walk from Manchester city centre, and also near the Lowry Hotel, where Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has made his home while his family remain in London.

Guardiola has publicly played down the significance of his purchase, but did acknowledge that he is happy at City, who are currently 15 points clear at the top of the Premier League, having won 18 successive matches in the competition.

He said: “I bought an apartment because I have to live somewhere, and I’m happy to live in the city. It happened the same when I was a player at Roma, at Brescia, and when I was in Munich. I prefer to live in the city and be with the people.

“And my commitment [to City] was the same last season, when we didn’t win. It looks like a higher commitment because we are winning, but the commitment last season was the same.”

Guardiola is seeking a 19th successive league victory at Crystal Palace on Sunday which would equal his personal record, set with Bayern Munich between October 2013 and March 2014.

Victory at Selhurst Park would also set a new Premier League record of 12 consecutive away victories, set by Chelsea in December 2008.

Guardiola gave his view on Virgil van Dijk's move to Liverpool (Getty)

City also look well on course to beat Chelsea’s record of 95 points in a Premier League season. They already have 58 points with just 20 games played; remarkably, that is a total that City failed to achieve over an entire Premier League season before 2009-10.

Guardiola has faced criticism in recent days over the amount of money he has spent in building a side who are 15 points clear at the top of the table; Mourinho suggested after United’s Boxing Day draw with Burnley that “Manchester City buy full-backs for the price of strikers” while claiming that his own squad were not equipped to win the Premier League.

City have certainly spent heavily on defenders, with full-backs Kyle Walker, Benjamin Mendy and Danilo costing a combined total of more than £120m last summer.

Guardiola, however, believes that quality costs money, and works out cheaper in the long run, because the best players can produce top-level performances on a long-term basis.

It is the reason too why Guardiola feels that the £75m that Liverpool have paid Southampton for Virgil van Dijk will prove a wise investment.

He said: “Liverpool took an amazing player. Van Dijk is an exceptional central defender, that’s a price we’ll see [again] in the future.

“Sometimes the cheaper players are more expensive than the expensive players. If he played for six or seven years at a high level, it would be cheap. If he played not well, he would be more expensive.”

Guardiola also pointed to the value of centre-back John Stones, who City bought from Everton for £47.5m in August 2016.

“John Stones, when he came here, people said he was too expensive,” he said. “Now he’s too cheap. It always depends on the value of what happens on the pitch.”