Jack Grealish has won three Premier League titles, a Champions League and high-profile endorsements since joining Manchester City but the jury remains out on whether it has been a success
Jack Grealish has won three Premier League titles, a Champions League and high-profile endorsements since joining Manchester City but the jury remains out on whether it has been a success Jack Grealish has won three Premier League titles, a Champions League and high-profile endorsements since joining Manchester City but the jury remains out on whether it has been a success
Jack Grealish returns to Aston Villa this afternoon with seven notable medals at home, many millions in the bank and a career drifting into a morass.
The free-wheeling maverick whose £100m transfer did not seem entirely outlandish has, in the space of three years, been transformed into the world’s most expensive decoy. And at that not even a particularly effective one.
When Grealish left his boyhood club for City in August 2021 he was hailed as a difference-maker who would give Pep Guardiola yet another weapon to destroy opponents. But from the start there was a gradual stifling of Grealish’s creativity to become part of the machine. Now that Pep’s appliance needs a service, it is inevitable that the Grealish debate revs up once again.
Three Premier League titles and a Champions League win, endorsement deals that led to some experts claiming he had become the “world’s most marketable footballer” in early 2023, suggest it has been hugely successful. If silverware and money are all that matters.
But Grealish the Villan carried such flair that it was easy to tie him to the feeling that football is about so much more. Players with such skill and unpredictability are what make people fall in love with the game.
Grealish has never been a man to stuff the stats sheet. In his final season at Villa there were 10 league goals and 16 assists, career best figures in both categories. Then again, he has always been about the bits that are harder to quantify.
In three and a bit seasons, he has 12 league goals and 23 assists for City. There were moments during the Treble season when he was outstanding, not least in a 4-1 win against Liverpool when Guardiola made a point of embracing him with a huge bear hug.
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But since that crowning night against Inter Milan in Istanbul, with Grealish emerging from the Ataturk Stadium in the early hours of Sunday morning carrying a boombox playing Fleetwood Mac in his right hand and a Heineken in the left, the slide has been desperate.
There have been injuries – causing him to miss 15 games in all competitions last season – but the return has been a remarkable three goals and two assists. In the entirety of last season he registered five shots on target, so far in this one there have been three.
Instead his existence has been focused on holding the ball up and attracting opponents for others to capitalise on the space. So far in this campaign he is averaging more touches per 90 minutes than at any stage in his career – only to be taking on opponents less frequently than any point since his debut season at City.
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Those stats do a solid job at telling the story, though nothing beats the experience of watching Grealish up close, waiting and waiting for a moment of brilliance that now seldom arrives.
So as City, struggling to emerge from an existential crisis, head to north Birmingham this afternoon it is entirely reasonable to ponder if there are regrets from one of the country’s most gifted players. Only Grealish and those close to him know whether this has all been worth it but for the game’s old romantics it is hard to not watch him with a tinge of sadness.
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