BAYERN chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge says it will be his “Christmas surprise, one way or another” – whether Pep Guardiola agrees to extend his contract beyond next June or whether he walks away at the end of the season.

Talks have twice been postponed and now they’re scheduled to take place at the start of the Bundesliga’s winter break. The Bayern board are clear: they want a commitment one way or another before the new year. Planning ahead: it’s the Bayern way.

Except it’s not quite the Pep way. Even during his four years as coach of Barcelona, he would only ever sign short-term deals, extending his contract in February, usually after much public soul-searching and indecision in January. Since arriving at Bayern in the summer of 2013 he has shown commitment and avoided talk of renewals or raises, which is exactly what the club wanted. Now, however, he has the leverage. And if he doesn’t want to decide his future now, he feels it’s his prerogative.

It also makes sense, from his perspective. He knows full well that he’s still arguably the biggest managerial brand in the name. Should he seek employment elsewhere, there’s a very good chance that options would open up for him, not just at Manchester City (to whom he’s been

aggressively linked in the past), but elsewhere too. Should Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea campaign continue to stutter, you’d imagine Roman Abramovich would welcome him. Should Louis van Gaal continue to take baby steps at Old Trafford – particularly given his age and the fact that he himself won’t commit past 2017 – there could well be an opportunity there as well. Maybe this will be the summer when Arsene Wenger finally rides into the sunset. Perhaps he might be drawn to a new league, like Serie A (Juventus or Roma) or Ligue 1 (Paris St Germain, where Laurent Blanc’s job never seems as secure as it should). Heck, if he decided to go home, unless Luis Enrique wins another treble, would Barcelona really have the strength to say no?

Bayern realize all this. And that’s why they want him to make a decision here and now. In two seasons, he has won two Bundesliga titles, a World Club Championship crown and a German Cup and this year he’s once again running away with the German title. His critics say it’s all well and good, but given the club’s domestic supremacy, the real benchmark ought to be the Champions League. And here, Bayern have suffered two semi-final exits in consecutive years. On the one hand, you can see it as Pep taking them very close. On the other, both defeats – against Real Madrid and Barcelona – were as comprehensive as they come, with an aggregate score of 3-10.

You can see both sides, but realpolitik suggests Bayern have got this one wrong. An ultimatum like the one they are seemingly giving Guardiola only works if you’re prepared to follow through on your threat. If he refuses to commit by the new year, are they really going to begin their search for a new manager, with all that implies, such as a lame-duck boss and speculation over his successor? And would that not negatively impact the rest of the campaign? Not to mention a scenario which is far from implausible: what if Guardiola wins the treble and insists he wants to stay? Would they then back out of a commitment with his replacement? Or happily jettison a guy who delivered what they wanted?

You’d think a well-run club like Bayern might be a little more flexible. Sure, if Guardiola walks out in May, it would mean scrambling for a replacement. But it’s not necessarily the end of the world. In 2014, Juventus lost their highly successful manager, Antonio Conte, in mid-July and found a replacement, Max Allegri, who came within one game of delivering a European treble. It seems like a risk worth taking rather than cutting off your nose to spite your face and putting the rest of the 2015-16 campaign in jeopardy.

CRYSTAL PALACE host Sunderland tomorrow evening and, by then, the South London club may well have announced that the American pair of David Blitzer and Josh Harris have taken a stake in the club. It will be a minority share, but as chairman Steve Parish explains, it’s a chance to get some investment and “accelerate” the process of turning Palace into a powerhouse.

Harris and Blitzer are billionaires who already co-own two US franchises: the National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils and the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia 76ers. Blitzer lived in London for more than a decade until a 2012 and has a good understanding of how football operates on this side of the pond.

Two questions arise. The first is that their stewardship of their American teams hasn’t exactly yielded impressive results. The Devils reached the Stanley Cup final in 2011-12. Since the Blitzer-Harris takeover in 2013, they twice failed to reach the playoffs (which, given that 16 of 30 NHL teams qualify, isn’t particularly impressive.

The Sixers are a more curious conundrum. The pair took them over in 2011, squeezed into the playoffs the first year and then went into a

terminal decline. Since the start of the 2013-14 season, they’ve won 37 games and lost 140, including 13 straight to start this campaign.

The club explain it’s part of their rebuilding process – low finishes guarantee high draft picks in the NBA – but fans are sceptical and some have gone so far as to accuse them of deliberately losing.

The other is why the pair would choose to come in as minority owners when they could easily buy a club of their own. Folks like Harris and Blitzer don’t usually put in cash unless they get ultimate say on how it’s spent.

MICHEL PLATINI isn’t quite out of the Fifa presidential race just yet, but a final verdict is imminent. Last week, FIFA’s Ethics committee confirmed it had turned down his appeal against his suspension for the much-discussed £1.8 million payment he received from Sepp Blatter in 2011. And yesterday, they confirmed that they were close to making a definitive decision on whether to make his provisional suspension permanent.

Platini’s camp have welcomed this. It clears the way for them to take their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.

That’s where, they believe, they’ll get a fair hearing, unlike Fifa’s Ethics Committee.

In some ways, it’s an all-or-nothing strategy. Lose the appeal to CAS and his administrative career in football will be over once and for all. Win, and it will not just clear the way for him to re-enter the Fifa contest, it will also cast further doubt on the Ethics Committee and its most recent raft of suspensions.

That said, right now, he has nothing to lose, but his credibility.