Grealish has only to bide his time

WOLVES have been mightily impressive these last five or six weeks.

There haven’t been any excuses from the manager or the dressing room about the number of games they have had to play or the amount of travelling they have had to endure to fulfil Europa League obligations.

There was a little bit of bleating about it at the start of the season but in the end they seem to have said: ‘What do we want, do we want to compete in Europe and the Premier League and reinstate Wolves as a European name or do we want to focus on one competition and not worry too much about the other?’

The answer has obviously been the former and the fact they won at Manchester City after a tough European trip was the sign of a club that mean business. They will go into today’s West Midlands derby against Aston Villa full of beans after Thursday’s Europa League victory over Slovan Bratislava.

As for Villa, there weree plenty of positives from last weekend’s narrow defeat at by Liverpool, when a last-minute Sadio Mane goal cost them a point. And I wonder if

Keinan Davis finally deserves a little run up front.

I’m also confident that Jack Grealish’s omission from Gareth

Southgate’s latest England nd squad is a positive for Villa.

Grealish (above) doesn’t have the passing range of Leicester’s James Maddison or the straight-line dynamism of Chelsea’s Mason Mount. But what he does have is the ability to pick holes on football pitches and find space. And in international football, when somesometimes games can be more llike chess matches, that kind of player can be liklike gold dust.

It’s a case of when, nnot if, Grealish will get a call-up but I like the fact that as we approach the winter pperiod he just has to wwait that bit longer anand put in that little bit more for his club before getting the prize.

His time will come and a timely ratcheting up of the quality levels against Wolves won’t go unnoticed by Southgate.