The Case For Jack Grealish’s $130 Million Deal Being Good Value

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – JUNE 12: Jack Grealish of Manchester City celebrates with the UEFA Champions League Trophy and Premier League Trophy on stage in St Peter’s Square during the Manchester City trophy parade on June 12, 2023 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

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As his first season at Manchester City drew to a close, Jack Grealish revealed he’d been using the words of one of his youth team coaches to cope with criticism.

Breaking the British transfer record the previous summer in a $130 million deal from Aston Villa, heaped colossal pressure on the man who’d become a household name and housewives’ favourite during the England national team’s run to the Euro 2020 final.

To deal with the scrutiny, the Solihull lad would recall a phrase Steve Burns used to tell him.

“He always used to say: ‘Pressure is a privilege’,” Grealish explained.

“Especially as time goes on, I think there’s such a mental side to football now where you need to be in the right mindset.

“It was a massive decision [to join City]

. I’d been at Villa my whole life, since I was six – obviously growing up, playing for my boyhood club and captaining them.

“To leave was a difficult decision, I’ve said it plenty of times, but it was something I felt was right at the time. I think it was the perfect time for me to move on, try something new, and step out of my comfort zone.”

Grealish might have been saying the right things, but he constantly faced criticism for a perceived regression on it.

Although he was playing in a very different team and facing opponents who gave him little space to operate, pundits chastised the midfielder for not taking the games by the scruff of the neck.

“If you come into a team with great players, you have to impose yourself,” ex-Manchester City forward Rodney Marsh said in a often-repeated critique.

“But I don’t think Grealish has done that. I think he’s taken a backward step.

“At best, he’s been peripheral. He seems to have gone into his shell. He doesn’t seem to be the same type of player.

“He’s playing with much better players at City. So when the ball is recycled, it doesn’t get to him the way it did at Aston Villa.

“Whenever Villa got the ball, they used to give it to him all the time. But when you’ve got a lot of top players in the same team, it’s different.

“He’s playing with much better players at City. So when the ball is recycled, it doesn’t get to him the way it did at Aston Villa.”

Nevertheless, the Premier League title was still delivered at the end of his first campaign with Grealish playing more games than he had done in the previous two seasons with Aston Villa.

He stepped it up considerably the next season and was an ever-present starter as City won the Premier League, Champions League, and FA Cup.

According to team-mate Kyle Walker, Grealish made the crucial difference.

“The second season, when we won the treble, I can honestly say he was probably the reason why we won that,” he said on his BBC podcast last year.

“He dragged players into areas that they didn’t want to come in, offloaded the ball to someone who had more space. That’s Jack’s quality. He is a fantastic player.”

His manager Pep Guardiola agreed.

“I don’t have any doubts about the qualities of Jack,” the Catalan coach said earlier this year, “the quality has always been there, the year of the treble would have been impossible.”

But Grealish has slipped down the pecking order in the last two years. He is no longer challenging for a starting berth; at the end of last season, he wasn’t making the matchday squads.

“Don’t ask me about Jack,” snapped an irritated Guardiola at a journalist who questioned Grealish’s omission as the 2024/25 campaign reached its final phase.

“It’s nothing personal with Jack. I am the person who fought for him to come here and the person who fought for him to stay here this season and the next season. I am the one who said ‘I want Jack Grealish’.

However, TalkSport’s chief football correspondent, Alex Crook, claims the situation for Grealish has deteriorated since Guardiola was annoyed by the reporter’s questions.

“I’m told he has accepted that his City career is over,” Crook said this week.

“Everton and West Ham are two of the clubs keen on signing him on loan from the Premier League, but I think there is going to be some negotiating to be done.

“He earns around [$400,000]-a-week, obviously that would be too rich for Everton, so, either he is going to have to take a pay cut, or Manchester City, if they do agree to loan him out, would have to supplement those wages.”

This is quite the decline for a man who was linked with Bayern Munich and Napoli at the start of the summer, but it might be what he needs.

That, at least, is the belief of Gareth Barry, who made the same switch several years ago.

When Gambling.com asked if Grealish would benefit from following in his footsteps, he said, “Yes, if I were sitting in Jack’s shoes, I’d want to go out there and prove everyone wrong.

“People are starting to write him off a little bit. He’ll be thinking he can still get in the England squad, if he can play regular football and that’s exactly what I’d be thinking. So for me, Everton would be a good move.”

“He probably wouldn’t have to move from where he’s living up in Cheshire, so he’d be settled off the pitch and he can go out there and concentrate on the football and prove everyone wrong, because everyone knows that he’s got the ability to go and produce the goods.”

As his Manchester City career ends, the question is – was it a success?

Given how it ended and the relentless negative reporting that has followed Grealish since he made the $130 million switch, it’s tempting to say he failed.

However, that is to completely discount the testimony of his team-mate and manager that he was instrumental in achieving the greatest trophy haul in English soccer history.

Those words make it almost impossible to say that the deal, worth more than $250 million when wages are factored in, is not good value given what it led to.

In commercial and emotional terms, winning the Treble is massive for Manchester City.

It wouldn’t have been possible without Grealish, which makes his signing good value.