For a few minutes at least, the presence of Pep Guardiola in his Peaky Blinders cap seduced Manchester City into believing all was right with the world. He arrived at the Etihad Stadium directly from the airport and only 25 minutes before kick-off, but the fact he turned up at all felt strangely restorative for a club teetering on the precipice. While he operates these days under the title of global ambassador for City Football Group, even this grandiose label scarcely reflects his significance as eternal leader of the sky-blue half of Manchester, a seer who remains master of all he surveys. But if the players were hoping for him to be a good-luck charm against Paris St-Germain, he had all the benign effect of a black cat walking under a ladder.

At first he looked rapt, animatedly talking tactics with his closest confidant, Manuel Estiarte. But any illusion of romance soon curdled as a swaggering PSG tore City to ribbons. This was the first time in a decade that a City game in the Champions League had not been managed by Guardiola, and just the second occasion in their 16 seasons in this competition that they had conceded three goals in the first 32 minutes. By the time Vitinha rifled PSG’s third beyond Gianluigi Donnarumma, Guardiola, sitting behind Ferran Soriano, the chief executive, was leaning forwards in anguish, pained both by the humiliation and his inability to transmit any message to Enzo Maresca on the touchline below.

Through his return to his old manor, where City fans’ defiance drowned out any foreboding about the reckoning to come, Guardiola was staying true to his pledge to show solidarity at the club’s darkest hour. His response to City being found guilty of both systematic cheating and an “egregious” failure to co-operate with the Premier League’s investigation was striking in its bullishness. “I want every single Manchester City fan across the world to know I am here, more than ever,” he said after the verdict. “I am, always have been, always will be, behind my club, my owner, my chairman, Ferran, the players, staff, Enzo and you, our unique supporters. Let me clear: we will get through this together. I love you all.”

You wonder whether this vehemence is partly designed to counter the unfortunate timing of his departure. Back in May, the confirmation that Guardiola was leaving looked neat and tidy, drawing the curtains on a decade of unparalleled dominance. But the impression in retrospect is of a man fleeing a burning building. Although there is no evidence that he had advance knowledge of how devastating the independent panel’s conclusions would be for City, his convenient summer exit has made him the subject of derision. One of the finer memes to emerge from this saga is of Guardiola mocked up as Manuel, the Spanish waiter from Fawlty Towers, feigning zero knowledge of Basil’s bet on the 3pm at Exeter. “I know nothing,” he announces, before adding with that inimitable lisp, “I am from Barthelona.”

It is, by any stretch, an unfortunate predicament in which Guardiola finds himself. Throughout his career he has presented himself not just as a tactical genius but as an idealist, a humanitarian, a moral crusader. During his final season at City, Pep the global peacemaker came to the fore more than ever. At a press conference in February, he gave an impassioned speech against injustice wherever he saw it, declaring: “Never in the history of humanity have we had the information in front of our eyes more clearly than now. The genocide in Palestine, what happened in Ukraine, what happened all around the world – in Sudan, everywhere. Do you want to see it? It’s our problem as human beings.”

The problem is that Guardiola’s position is riddled with internal contradictions. How, on the one hand, can he wear a keffiyeh to express his sympathies with the Palestinian cause and a yellow ribbon to protest against the imprisonment of political leaders in his native Catalonia, while consistently saying nothing about the authoritarian rule or dubious human rights record of his benefactors in Abu Dhabi? It is, quite simply, because he is in too deep to recognise his own hypocrisy.

Even now that he is no longer City manager, Guardiola is the most loyal advocate for everything associated with the United Arab Emirates. Just this week, he was used as the face of a £3bn ultra-luxury housing development in Abu Dhabi where Erling Haaland has already secured a waterfront mansion, announcing in a video: “It’s a pleasure to be here, my second home.”

With Andy Burnham facing deserved scrutiny for the closeness of his ties to the Gulf state, it is an uncomfortable look for Guardiola still to be in lockstep with Khaldoon Al Mubarak, City’s chairman and the UAE’s de facto prime minister, at a time when the club have been found guilty of cheating on an eyewatering scale. His allegiance to the money men is not in question, but his moral credibility most certainly is.