The first time Zlatan Ibrahimovic met Mino Raiola, the agent who has looked after his business for the last 15 years, was when a journalist friend, Thijs Sleiger from Voetbal International, had set them up with a meeting at the Okura hotel in Amsterdam. Ibrahimovic’s former agent, Anders Carlsson, had blown the previous arrangement by offering his client, then a player at Ajax, a move to Southampton (to which the young Zlatan apparently replied: “What the fuck! Southampton! Is that my level?”) The next guy, Ibrahimovic had been told, was a mafioso type. Raiola wasn’t that big in the industry at the time but he was on his way up and could offer more, undoubtedly, than Southampton.

“I wore my cool brown leather jacket from Gucci,” Ibrahimovic recalled. “I had no intention of being the idiot in the tracksuit who gets screwed over again. I put on my gold watch, drove there in my Porsche and parked right outside. It was like: ‘Here I come,’ and I went into that hotel and, well, that hotel! It’s right alongside the Amstel canal and is amazingly elegant and luxurious, and I thought: ‘This is it, I’ve got to play it cool now,’ and I went into the sushi restaurant in the hotel. We’d booked a table and I didn’t really know what sort of person to expect, probably some sort of pin-striped fella with an even bigger gold watch. But who the hell turned up? A bloke in jeans and a Nike T-shirt – and that belly, like one of the guys in the Sopranos. Was he supposed to be an agent, that weirdo?”

Raiola certainly isn’t the conventional type – “The guy wasn’t actually a mafioso,” Ibrahimovic helpfully clarified, “he just looked and acted like one” – and the first thing to make clear is that a man with his confrontational style won’t give a damn if he has hurt Pep Guardiola’s feelings with his description of Manchester City’s manager as “an absolute zero ... a coward, a dog”. Raiola doesn’t bend for anybody. He goes by his own rules, and to hell with anyone who doesn’t like it. The only surprise is that he hasn’t already tried to bury Guardiola again for having the temerity to have a nibble back.

Actually, more than a nibble. Guardiola made a reasonable point when he asked why Raiola would contact City to raise the possibility of Paul Pogba and Henrikh Mkhitaryan moving across Manchester during the January transfer window if the man who represented both players had such a low opinion of him. And, in the process, Guardiola showed there are cleverer ways to win an argument than resorting to insults.

Forget the details about Mkhitaryan – it was the mention of Pogba that made this almost Mourinho-esque from Guardiola, because of the way it changed the narrative and the implications for Manchester United if one of their few category-A players appears to be fishing for a move. There is, after all, a certain etiquette among managers not to disclose when players are offered to their clubs. Yet Raiola waived that right once he started the mud-slinging. Pogba is the collateral damage and that leaves United with a number of questions now Guardiola – not usually renowned as one of the profession’s great stirrers – has let it out of the bag.

Even if we were to give Pogba the benefit of the doubt and assume that Raiola had done it all off his own back, how must that make Manchester United’s supporters feel after all the other indignities they had to endure when Wayne Rooney started fluttering his eyelashes in City’s direction during his 2010 fallout with Sir Alex Ferguson?

Has Pogba, to borrow Fergie’s line, seen a cow in the next field and decided it might be better than the one in his own field? How much, if so, is that to do with his relationship with Mourinho? And does this join up some of the dots when it comes to the deterioration in Pogba’s form since the turn of the year, despite the improvement on Saturday as he showed his worth against City?

Pogba had previously been a mandatory first-team pick since his £90m move from Juventus brought him back to Old Trafford in August 2016. Yet he did not start either of the ties against Sevilla that ended United’s participation in the Champions League in March and the latest developments harden the stories about him and Mourinho having differences, including a disagreement regarding the player’s best position.

Raiola’s reported approach to City came after trying, and failing, to negotiate a pay rise with United for his player on the back of Alexis Sánchez’s arrival from Arsenal. To respond by offering his player to a rival is a classic Raiola move – aggressive, cat‑among-pigeons stuff, conforming to Ibrahimovic’s description as a man who is “completely fearless and prepared to pull any number of tricks” – and the irony here is that this is exactly the kind of song and dance that put off David Moyes when he was contemplating bringing Pogba to Old Trafford during the 2013-14 season.

Pogba would have cost £65m from Juventus at the time. Raiola was offering him to all the major European clubs and Moyes gave serious consideration to making him United’s showpiece signing. Ultimately, though, Moyes found it disconcerting that Pogba, then 20, had never appeared to be fully settled despite having already played for two of the world’s leading teams. Pogba, he concluded, might always have a restless streak and the decision was taken to shy away from a player Ferguson once claimed had left Old Trafford without “showing us any respect at all”. Maybe, all these years later, Moyes is being proven correct.

Pogba’s reaction to Guardiola’s press conference was to post the words “say what?” on his social‑media accounts, as if it was all news to him. But did anyone expect him to admit it might be true? Rooney always denied the City link, too. Yet a footballer would usually know, or at least have an inkling, if his agent was trying to sell him to the club’s neighbours. True, Raiola is not your ordinary agent, but nobody should think Guardiola has concocted this story out of thin air – and Pogba chose a bad time, perhaps, to die his hair blue.

Banished Berahino shows up a core problem for Stoke

Was anyone particularly surprised to hear that Saido Berahino, one of the more mystifying signings from Mark Hughes’s time at Stoke, had been disciplined and ordered to train with the under-23s after turning up late for a reserve game?

This follows Paul Lambert, Hughes’s successor, banishing Ibrahim Afellay from the training ground because of the Dutchman’s attitude and dropping Erik Pieters from the 2-1 defeat to Everton three weeks ago after finding out the defender had been in a nightclub the previous night.

As for Berahino, it is over two years since his last goal. The only headlines he seems to generate these days relate to events off the pitch and it is starting to feel like a trick of the mind now that Gareth Southgate once rated him a more exciting talent with England Under‑21s than Harry Kane. The gap between the two strikers is now a gulf and, on top of everything else, it is fair to say Berahino’s team-mates have not been overly impressed by his standoffish behaviour.

All clubs have a few bad apples in the dressing room. In Stoke’s case, however, it is starting to feel like they have a full orchard’s worth.

Hear no evil, read no evil

For a long time now, I’ve been wondering why so many people in the professional game – including kitmen, physios and a few footballers I could barely name, never mind want to lip-read – insist on putting their hands over their mouths when they are speaking to one another. But then I saw Neil Warnock’s reaction at the final whistle of Cardiff’s 1-0 defeat to Wolves and suddenly it didn’t feel so mystifying, after all.

• This story was updated on 7 April 2018, to reflect the Manchester derby