During Manchester City's 4-0 defeat of Southampton on Saturday, Pep Guardiola showcased his full range of touchline antics.
There were goal celebrations, exasperated flailing of the arms after misplaced passes, frantic instructions and all manner of gesticulations. He sat in the dugout, he stood on the touchline, he perched on a drinks cooler when Ederson misplaced a pass for perhaps the first time this season.
All that fed into the stereotype of the City boss being a control freak, a football obsessive caught up in a relentless pursuit of perfection who can never be satisfied, so much so that he forgets to enjoy the art that his genius has created. Perhaps the harshest and most unfair characterisation of Guardiola is that he has no human side, that he is all tactics and no emotion.
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That, of course, is simply untrue, but it has taken the help of Riyad Mahrez to prove it. It's no secret that the Algerian winger has not been in the best form of his City career of late, a somewhat surprising slump given how integral he was to City's success in each of the last two seasons.
In 2020/21, when in the final months of the season Guardiola had a fairly clear 'A team' for Champions League knockout ties and a 'B team' for dead-rubber Premier League games, Mahrez was a key member of the former. He scored three of City's four goals in the 4-1 aggregate defeat of Paris Saint-Germain in the semi-finals, propelling City to the final of the European Cup for the first time.
Last season his appetite for goals only increased, so much so that he finished the campaign as City's top scorer with 24 goals in all competitions.
This season has started differently. Mahrez has started just five of the Blues' 12 matches - three in nine in the league - and it took him until Wednesday's 5-0 defeat of FC Copenhagen to score his first goal of the season. Despite Mahrez's struggles, Guardiola has been unwavering in his support for a player who probably expected to be playing a more significant role for City when he penned a two-year contract extension in July.
Countless times over the past couple of months Guardiola has name-checked Mahrez when asked questions about his other stars, always eager to remind fans and reporters that just because Erling Haaland is scoring goals at a remarkable rate, it doesn't mean others can't contribute.
When asked to talk about the excellent form of Haaland, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and the like, Mahrez is the name Pep adds to the list. If some still want to pretend that Guardiola is some kind of soulless football supercomputer, then his reaction to Mahrez's superb goal against Southampton should leave everyone else in no doubt regarding the manager's humanity.
Everything about the goal was exactly how Guardiola wants his team to play - the switching of play to create overloads and leave a man free at the far post, Rodri clipping the ball to the far post to find said free man who finished clinically - but when he realised it was Mahrez who had volleyed the ball into the far corner of the goal, he was delighted.
Mahrez had spurned two decent chances earlier in the match while trying to pull off a similar finish, so when the third attempt proved successful Guardiola made sure to congratulate his star, pointing and applauding in his direction.
That's not to say that the manager is oblivious to the need for Mahrez to improve and rediscover his best form. He has said as much, but a huge part of man-management - something the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic claim is alien to Pep - is recognising achievement and giving praise when it's due.
It's also about sympathising with players on an emotional level. When back in March a last-gasp Cameroon goal cost Algeria and Mahrez their place at the upcoming World Cup, Guardiola gave his key man some time out of the City team because he was 'sad' and not in the right mental state.
Perhaps now we can drop the myth that Guardiola has no human side. Of all the managers in the Premier League, he is arguably the most human of them all.
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