Grealish has become world’s most expensive cheerleader at Man City
Robin Bairner
- 27 Apr 2022 14:12 BST
- 3 min read
Manchester City’s 4-3 victory over Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final second leg was laced with some brilliant individual displays.
Kevin De Bruyne, of course, caught the eye, as did the ever-improving Phil Foden, while Gabriel Jesus continued his rich seam of form by finding the net. Riyad Mahrez might not have found the net, but once again he was prominent on the European stage.
Meanwhile, City’s most expensive signing of all time, Jack Grealish, was anonymous. Left on the bench, it would have been easy to forget about the England international had he not celebrated Foden’s strike early in the second half jubilantly.
Now a player remembered more for his calves than his footballing ability, the £100 million summer signing from Aston Villa is the world’s most expensive cheerleader.
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Grealish pushed aside by Pep
Grealish has been quietly pushed to one side by manager Pep Guardiola such that his major contribution in the Champions League this season is his part in the riot that saw Atletico Madrid’s Felipe sent off in the quarter-finals as Stefan Savic infamously pulled his hair. Of course, the 26-year-old again played this prominent role as an unused substitute.
Signed in the summer to provide City with an extra offensive dimension, he has become little more than a luxury substitute – and one manager Pep Guardiola appears increasingly loathe to used on the biggest stage.
Having started five of the six group stage matches, Grealish has featured only for 22 minutes of the knockout phase.
Similarly, in the Premier League, this is a player who is not pulling his weight. Two goals and two assists is a poor return for such a lavish additional, with Grealish’s last decisive contribution in a 7-0 win over Leeds before Christmas. Since then, he has neither found the net nor set up a team-mate to do so.
For Guardiola, meanwhile, this is little concern; he has amply quality in his starting XI to guide City to their objectives, which was so impressively displayed against Madrid on Tuesday. But this should be all the more worrying for a man upon whom so much was expected when he arrived for a nine-figure fee in the summer.
A year into a contract that runs until 2027, Grealish has plenty of time to turn around his Manchester City career, but to portray his first season with the club as anything other than a disappointment would plainly be wrong.
