Jack has time to prove he’s the City lad...
WHEN a club spends £100m on a footballer, fans tend to expect someone who does the lot – scores goals, makes them and is at the heart of all good things the team does.
So for some of the less patient City fans, Jack Grealish’s first three months since his summer move have been a little underwhelming.
One goal and two assists in the Premier League, plus one of each in the Champions League, is not exactly pulling up trees in the stats department. But assessing Grealish on the stats, and comparing them to the six goals and 10 assists he managed for Aston Villa last season, is a little unfair, especially at such an early stage of the campaign.
Grealish has hardly stunk the place out.
Even if he had, the price tag would be irrelevant, and he simply would not be featuring for the Blues on a regular basis.
But his contribution has been much harder to pin down, and he is finding life at the top end of the Premier League very different to being the main man at Aston Villa, when opponents are all on the front foot and the spaces much easier to come by.
Being a wide player under Pep Guardiola is not easy. No matter how good you are, no matter how much you are a potential matchwinner, you are expected to sacrifice the notion of being the main man.
Leroy Sane fell foul of that. He was exceptionally talented, and on his day won games with his pace and eye for a goal.
But he was not too keen on being asked to hug the touchline, and stretch the opposition defence, to open up spaces inside.
Sane enjoyed being the main attraction, and it was clear to everyone – not least the player himself – that he had the ability to be exactly that.
But some games simply passed him by, as he hugged the touchline and David Silva and Sergio Aguero exploited the space that created.
The last of Grealish’s first 14 games was the disappointing 2-0 home defeat by Crystal Palace, in which he did more than most to try to prise open a determined and well-organised defence that was boosted by an early goal and helped by the dismissal of Aymeric Laporte.
The new boy began in his customary left-sided position, and some of his link-up play with Phil Foden and Kevin De Bruyne was top-notch.
He also constantly drew in two defenders, which has been a key part of his game for City, and fits neatly with Guardiola’s masterplan of always having a man more than the opposition in key areas.
“His positions are always good and he plays really good from the football perspective,” Guardiola said after the Palace game.
“With the confidence and a little bit more time he will be aggressive to take his own decisions to score a goal.
But when he gets the ball it always has sense with everything he does.
“He creates free men when he has the ball. Every time he has the ball Joao (Cancelo) and Rodri are alone and they can use him or do it the next time so in that time it’s really good.”
Grealish’s biggest problem is that
he is bound to be held up against his team-mates, past and present, even if comparing him to a speed merchant like Sane is wholly inappropriate.
His problem is that when Foden has played on the left in the last six months, he has been exceptional, and his destruction of James Milner as the Blues drew 2-2 with Liverpool has created a template.
It is not a fair one, in terms of Grealish.
Foden has the luxury of being up against an ageing, makeshift full-back in a team that, especially in front of its own fans at Anfield, has to be on the front foot.
That meant Foden was usually one-on-one with Milner, a luxury that Grealish rarely gets.
Grealish’s case was not helped in the second half against Palace, when he and Foden switched roles – the younger man going to the left and Grealish playing through the middle.
John Stones’ superb pass found Foden in space, and his exquisite control and chipped pass seemed to have made the equaliser for Gabriel Jesus, only for VAR to rule it out for a marginal offside against Foden.
It gave the Grealish doubters plenty of ammo, and reinforced their case for Foden to remain in the role.
That will not happen, simply because Foden has also been superb in the central role, and with Ferran Torres injured, noone else has come close to matching his efforts there.
And while Guardiola says he is pleased with his record signing’s contribution, he also made it plain that he wants more from him, in terms of goals and assists.
“He came for four or five years and this is just the beginning so he’s facing a (Palace team) set back so, so deep you have to find the spaces more difficult than before, more difficult team on the counter attack,” Guardiola said.
“But step by step he will get it.”