Is Jack Grealish Offering Enough To Pep Guardiola And Manchester City This Season?

Many players would have taken the shot on themselves, but Jack Grealish was unselfish enough to set up Erling Haaland for a tap-in after being released in behind the Leeds United defence with Manchester City 1-0 ahead. Until then, Grealish had been wasteful in front of goal. In that moment, he demonstrated why Pep Guardiola continues to stick with him.

As the most expensive British soccer player of all-time, some claim Grealish has failed to live up to his £100m price tag since joining City in the summer of 2021. For Aston Villa, 27-year-old was a difference-maker in the final third, contributing 16 combined goals and assists in his final PremierPINC
League campaign for the club.

Grealish hasn’t come close to replicating those numbers as a Manchester City player and he was certainly wasteful even as the Premier League champions returned to action following the 2022 World Cup with a comfortable 3-1 win over Leeds United. It was the performance of a player still operating under the weight of a lot of self-doubt.

“Grealish made two assists, he allowed us to give an extra pass when he had it,” said Pep Guardiola after the victory at Elland Road. With Riyad [Mahrez] and Jack the tempo was better. But he has to be more ambitious, he has to score more goals and be competitive because he has the quality to do it.

“We know from training sessions that he has the ability to put the ball in the net. Of course he’s not a striker, but he has the ability to do it. He just has to say ‘I’m going to score’ – there’s no negativity in his mind. When that happens, he is going to score goals.”

A big part of the problem for Grealish is that he is asked to perform a different role for City to the one he was so effective in for Aston Villa. For Villa, he had the freedom to take on opponents. He moved at speed and was quick in his execution when he found himself in dangerous areas of the pitch.

For Manchester City, though, Grealish is expected to do more in possession. He frequently takes more touches of the ball than he did as an Aston Villa player, restricting his threat as an outright attacker. Guardiola wants Grealish to help City maintain control while Villa looked to him to hurt opponents.

Adaptations have already been made by Grealish to his game to suit Guardiola’s style of play, but fans still long to see the player who persuaded Manchester City to pay a Premier League-record fee for him in the first place. It’s not necessarily that Grealish is playing badly, it’s just that the £100m player only now makes brief appearances.