GREALISH DIVIDES OPINION
Game-changer or show-off? Incisive or ponderous? Whatever your view...
Perhaps it is the socks around his calf muscles, the rather too cultivated hair, or the vivid facial expressions on the pitch which caused a disparaging roy Keane to say of Jack Grealish when aston Villa drew 0-0 with sheffield United in June: ‘every time I looked at him he was laughing.’
Or maybe it was the episode with the range rover and the parked cars in central Birmingham, when breaking lockdown rules was a rare and shocking misdemeanour.
Whether all or none of the above, there was a distinct impression when Grealish was left out of the england squad last week that he did not conform to the type of neat, skilful player who tends to get the nod these days. his face did not fit.
‘The difficulty for Jack is Mason Greenwood, Jadon sancho, raheem sterling, Marcus rashford,’ said Gareth southgate at the time. It was hard to imagine a more emphatic way of discovering that you are not picked for england. Little wonder Grealish seemed so dejected in an ensuing text exchange with his friend and former teammate alan hutton. ‘I could tell he was demoralised,’ hutton told the BBC.
Grealish certainly divides opinion. Graeme souness feels the player’s easiness on the eye is deceptive — that he holds on to the ball too long, takes too many touches, lacks quick decisionmaking skills and that there is no virtue in being the premier League’s most fouled player last season.
he certainly struggled to contribute after the restart and only in the final game — the draw with West ham that kept Villa up — did he get on the scoresheet.
But the search for the real Grealish keeps leading back to what the staff at Villa’s Bodymoor heath training ground say about him. all season long, before the pandemic wreaked its chaos, they spoke of seeing him in the gym there of an evening, working with his personal strength and conditioning coach. hutton describes him leaving the place at 7pm some nights.
The slight raffish exterior belies a player for whom football seems to matter very much and whose acclimatisation to the premier League was actually remarkable. seeing a pass, running into dangerous pockets, creating chances, winning free-kicks — any other 24-year-old english player who had made such a transition to the world’s most challenging division would have been garlanded.
But that sometimes outrageous self-confidence and the fact that he is Villa’s best player by such a distance led to the baffling conclusion that he ‘couldn’t do it in a quality side’.
southgate’s conclusion that ‘we don’t see him’ as a midfield player belongs to the same narrow interpretation of him.
at times during england’s european Championship qualification campaign, england’s midfield has looked insipid, uninspired and in desperate need of something mercurial, bold or different.
Grealish brings these things and it is hard to assess a qualification campaign which has been such a procession against so many ordinary nations.
although rashford’s absence has earned him the first call-up, Grealish will need an opportunity to present itself in midfield if he is not to disappear to the back of that long roll- call of wingers and No 10s southgate said were ahead of him. some might feel their hearts sink, Grealish is not made that way. he has reached the squad and a rather dull pair of Nations League fixtures now assume a glint of technicolour.