Joe Hart must leave Manchester City to save England spot

Joe Hart of Manchester City (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)

DURING Pep Guardiola’s three seasons at Bayern Munich, Manuel Neuer made 2077 short passes in 97 Bundesliga games.

In that same period in the Premier League, Joe Hart made 562.

Neuer’s accuracy rate was 85%. Hart’s was 49%.

Those figures tell you in a nutshell why the coming week could be the most important in the England goalkeeper’s career.

When the new season opened last weekend, Guardiola made the shock call to leave Hart out of Manchester City’s first line-up and pick his understudy, Willy Caballero.

He explained afterwards that it was a decision based on the requirements of one particular match. But when City took the field again in the Champions League last Tuesday, the Argentinean was still in the team and Hart was still on the bench.

Pep followed that up by saying Hart could leave City if he wants.

Barcelona’s Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Claudio Bravo have been linked with moves to City. Like Neuer, they are ‘sweeper-keepers’.

Bravo, No. 2 at the Nou Camp, is more gettable and a City bid is said to have been lodged.

Josep Guardiola (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images) — Pep Guardiola (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

As those raw statistics indicate, Hart is not Guardiola’s sort of goalie. He doesn’t have the distribution skills. It’s not natural for him to be part of the outfield in the way that Neuer and the Barca keepers are.

And Guardiola has said that time is against Hart adapting his game.

“I am not saying he’s not able to do it,” he said. “With training he can do it. With time.

“But his time is now. It’s not about what happens in six months, seven months.”

It is understood that Hart, who was later back for pre-season than Caballero following his post-Euro 2016 break, feels he’s been disrespected by Guardiola and is reluctant to stay and fight for his place because he thinks it’s a fight he can’t win.

He will know that he could probably oust Caballero in a straight battle between the two, simply because he’s the better all-round keeper.

But if Guardiola brings in someone more tailored to his requirements, there’s even a possibility that Hart might not make the bench every
week.

If he wants to remain as England’s No. 1, he can’t allow that to happen.

Sam Allardyce (Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)

Sam Allardyce is due to pick his first squad next Sunday, and while Hart will be named, it’s unlikely he’d be started in the first World Cup qualifier against Slovakia if he hasn’t had a serious 90 minutes of football this season.

Hart has been England’s No.1 for six years, clocking up 63 caps and barely missing a game.

It’s a status he’ll be anxious to retain. But with Fraser Forster a regular at Southampton, Jack Butland returning to the Stoke side after injury and Tom Heaton now in the Premier League with Burnley, Allardyce does have alternatives.

Roy Hodgson’s former No. 2, Gary Neville, says that Hart shouldn’t “throw his toys out of the pram” and ought to “stay exactly where he is”. But Hart now knows that the writing on the wall is pretty unequivocal.

Guardiola has a history of making his mind up early on players who might normally be considered untouchable.

In his early days at Barcelona he ditched Ronaldinho, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Yaya Toure, Deco and Samuel Eto’o. At Bayern it was club legend Bastian Schweinsteiger.

Hart, it seems, had little clue of what awaited him when he returned from what was a poor Euros personally, as well as a disastrous one for
England.

He thought he would be City’s keeper for years to come and understandably doesn’t want to be rushed into making a hasty decision on his future.

His preferred solution is a season-long loan, which would give him regular football and buy him time to examine his options.

Most top-flight clubs would create a vacancy for a keeper of Hart’s reputation, but the best six or seven all have strong incumbents.

Everton appears the most likely Premier League destination, though Hart wouldn’t rule out a year abroad. Sevilla are said to be interested.

Either way, it’s a downwards move frm Cityin terms of the stature of the respective clubs.

Hart, though, will have to bite the bullet. At 29, and with his England future in mind, his priority has to be regular games.

Roy Hodgson considered him to be streets ahead of his rivals. He always said he had “no dilemma” in selecting Hart even if Manuel Pellegrini had benched him for a few games because he felt he’d become complacent and needed to be jolted back to focus.

Unlike Hodgson, Allardyce has no such loyalty to Hart.

The slate is clean and he’s already said that his first XI will be dictated by what’s gone on over the opening weeks of the new season.

Hart might feel hard done by because he’s clearly good enough at what a goalkeeper is traditionally supposed to be good at.

He has big decisions to make this week and he needs to get them right.