Sometimes Pep Guardiola doesn’t really get how English football works.

For the most part, it has to be said, he is very much in tune with the quirky realties of the game in his adopted country. But just occasionally, he entirely misses the point.

A clear example of that came in the wake of Manchester City’s defeat to Liverpool at Anfield last Sunday. When the home team went 2-0 up, their fans started singing that old favourite tune: “You’re getting sacked in the morning!.”

Given he has been wandering the Premier League landscape for the best part of a decade, you would have expected the Spaniard to know that was coming. Instead, he was surprised and maybe a little hurt, that they would mock him that way.

“I didn’t expect that at Anfield,” he said after the game.

Er, what exactly did you expect, Pep? Liverpool fans to chant about how good you are while expressing their hope that you turn things around at City sooner rather than later?

Come on, we are talking about a massive football rivalry here between the two teams that have been the main title contenders for much of the last 10 years. Anfield was bound to enjoy watching their boys inflict City’s sixth defeat in seven games.

There was absolutely no chance of him getting sacked the next morning

And what makes this behaviour even more typically English is that I am sure every single person singing that song did it with irony because, in Pep’s case, there was absolutely no chance of him getting sacked the next morning. Or any morning, come to that.

Normally when fans launch into that chant, there is a fair to reasonable chance the manager in question will find himself out of work the next day. Like the Wolverhampton Wanderers fans who sang the same song towards their own manager as they lost 4-0 to Everton.

In Pep’s case, it was little more than a naughty little tongue-in-cheek moment that anybody who has been involved in English football should not only expect but probably embrace.

Anyway, my most interesting take away from that game was the statistic someone pointed out immediately after the final whistle – that Manchester United had had three different managers in charge since City last won a football match.

Sure, that losing run came to an inevitable end on Wednesday when City returned to some sort of form to beat Nottingham Forest, but it is a weird little fact that will make one heck of a pub-quiz question one day...

The cup runneth over

For want of anything better to do, I spent a couple of happy hours watching the FA Cup last weekend.

I don’t normally pay much attention to the early rounds of this beautiful old competition, which I feel slightly ashamed to admit.

But watching Wealdstone vs Wycombe Wanderers was a trip back in time to days when football was more raw, intimate and pure. And it was delightful.

Yes, the quality of the football wasn’t anything to write home about, especially from Wealdstone, who play in the fifth tier of the game and are only semi-professional. League One leaders Wycombe rarely looked overly troubled in their 2-0 victory.

But what was happening on the pitch was almost irrelevant, to be honest. I was way more intrigued by the ground, the fans and the atmosphere.

The stadium itself has obviously grown and expanded over the decades with little or no forward planning, which is entirely understandable for a club of their size and with their limited resources.

The stands are all haphazard and of varying sizes and quality. The tunnel is basically a wooden structure with an aged, yellowing cover on it. The dressing rooms are the sort of buildings you would expect to find in a public park. The fans were so close to the pitch a carefully timed sniff could probably tell them what the player taking a throw-in had had for lunch.

But for me, that rawness is what makes football at this level so much more real. No glamour, no glitz, just people who love playing the game surrounded by people who love watching it. It’s the proper definition of grass roots, and it needs to be cherished.

Meanwhile, the next round of the FA Cup has thrown up a tie we all need to watch. No, I am not talking about Arsenal vs Manchester United, which is probably the most elite of the games to be played in January. And no, neither am I talking about Manchester City vs Salford City, although that should be interesting, with the away side owned by the Manchester United’s Class of 92.

While both of those will be good, solid, intriguing third-round clashes, the stand-out game for me has to be Everton vs Peterborough United. Why? Because it has the potential to pit father against son.

In one corner, you have former England star Ashley Young, who is still an Everton regular despite being extremely close to 40. In the other, his 18-year-old son Tyler, who signed for Peterborough in August.

I’ve seen a lot of weird and wonderful stuff in English football over the years but I don’t think I have ever seen a match that has pitted father against son. Brother vs brother, yes, plenty of times. Cousins and even in-laws too. But a player competing against his own offspring? That’s a new one to me.

The only potential piece of grit in the Vaseline of this plan is that Tyler is not yet a Peterborough regular. In fact, at the time of writing, he had only made one appearance for them, and that as a substitute.

While that makes it incredibly unlikely the younger Young will start, I think you can bet your bottom dollar he will be on the bench and that he will, at some point, get on the pitch.

It’s a piece of history that is there to be made and I don’t think either manager will be able to resist the temptation of making it.

E-mail: James.calvert@timesofmalta.com

X: @maltablade