There’s a welcome wind of change blowing through English football, an openness, a glasnost, a trend unlikely to be reversed.

The unprecedented access City granted to an Amazon Prime documentary crew and the extraordinary relaxation of Gareth Southgate’s successful England squad are part of this wider phenomenon.

Footballers now approaching their prime are part of the social-media generation — where extreme openness is the norm.

England’s players were refreshingly candid with the media this summer — and their likeability was also boosted by some brilliant use of social media.

This generation of players no longer wants to be part of an industry which gags them and suppresses personalities.

They want to invite you inside their inner sanctum and let you know what they’re really like — from Dele Alli’s new double-jointed salute to Kyle Walker mugging off Harry Maguire for the famous image of him chatting to his enraptured girlfriend.

This is not just peripheral frippery. To teens and 20-somethings, this matters.

Spurs star Danny Rose, who has given several extraordinarily honest interviews over the past year, is adamant that being allowed to air his feelings in public has been an immense benefit to him as a footballer and a man.

It is no coincidence that once Southgate and other enlightened minds in the FA decided to open things up, England finally did themselves justice at a major tournament.

You or I  might find it alien — and Gary Neville can  continue howling at the moon whenever a footballer breaks the old code of omerta  — but this is a  shift which Guardiola’s City are embracing.

Mourinho looks positively Jurassic in comparison, failing to even answer basic football questions after Sunday’s 3-2 defeat at Brighton.

Before City faced Huddersfield on Sunday, David Silva was on the touchline cradling his baby son, who miraculously survived after being born 14 weeks premature.

After Silva had excelled in a 6-1 victory, Guardiola spoke warmly of how much Silva’s personal struggle motivated his squad last term.

But at Brighton, Anthony Martial was being hauled off by Mourinho with neither player nor manager able to even look at one another.

Martial had been fined by Mourinho for failing to return to United’s pre-season tour of the US following the birth of his son. It was certainly not a decision that you could ever imagine Guardiola or Southgate making.

Mourinho’s is chiefly a human problem, rather than a football one.

He used to inspire players back in his heyday, now he actively demotivates them.

After defeat at the Amex, there was one instance of remarkable honesty from the United ranks — Paul Pogba’s admission that his attitude had been wrong.

It can only have been made out of a desire to further undermine an isolated manager, who was abandoned by his closest ally, No 2 Rui Faria, this summer.

With Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola also mouthing off on Twitter, the whole circus is getting out of hand.

As early as last August, it was obvious Italian boss Antonio Conte no longer wanted to be at Chelsea.

His relationship with both boardroom and dressing-room was broken, even as he began a title defence.

Yet that unhappy marriage limped on all season, with Chelsea surrendering their Champions League status as a result.

United’s board, having failed to fully back Mourinho in the transfer market, must decide whether they are willing to take a similar risk — despite a dearth of viable replacements.

It now seems inconceivable peace will break out for Mourinho at United.

Even Gandhi would have struggled to bring that about.

Fury as AJ is slated

THE build-up to Tyson Fury’s showdown with Deontay Wilder will see Anthony Joshua either ridiculed or airbrushed out of history.

The narrative surrounding the Vegas fight will be of WBC belt-holder Wilder taking on the ‘linear heavyweight  champion of the world’ because Fury is ‘the man who beat the man who beat the man’.

Yet he’s also the man who failed a drug test.

Like Fury, Joshua defeated Wladimir Klitschko and is unbeaten as a pro. He has already unified the other three major belts.

He’s no coward or phony, no matter what stick he receives from the unholy alliance of Wilder and Fury.

Neither of them will be ‘the man’ until they defeat Joshua.

It’s hol over

UNAI EMERY may have lost his first two games as Arsenal boss but the Spaniard has clearly recognised the chief problem he inherited from Arsene Wenger.

He found the club had been run like a holiday camp for years, with senior players rarely held accountable for sub-standard performances.

Emery demanded that the brilliant but infuriating Mesut Ozil gets more involved and, when he didn’t do so against Chelsea, the German was substituted midway through the second half.

He dropped Aaron Ramsey after feeling the Welshman hadn’t been convincing enough against Manchester City.

Emery deserves patience. He is on the right lines.

Making ‘em pay

BEN STOKES was banned from an Ashes series because of his scrap outside a nightclub yet still faces the prospect of a further suspension from a Cricket Discipline Commission despite being cleared in court.

Danny Cipriani has already been fined by both a magistrates’ court and his club, Gloucester, after he admitted assault and resisting arrest for a ‘minor incident’ on a night out in Jersey, yet he has now also been charged by the RFU.

How many times can one man be punished for the same thing?

If you are a gifted English sportsman, it seems everyone wants to join in.

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