With a license to roam, Everton are already witnessing more of the Aston Villa Grealish than the player was ever allowed to show at Manchester City
In the early stages at Molineux, Jack Grealish received the ball on the right flank before drifting in-field, flirting with the penalty area and switching play out to the left.
Grealish then remained central, and though visibly frustrated when Iliman Ndiaye wriggled out of a tight spot before failing to find him, he sensed this space between two Wolves players was a dangerous pocket.
He was right, with Vitalii Mykolenko’s inch-perfect cross picking out Everton’s new No 10 beyond the back post before his header across goal was nodded in by Beto. Seven minutes on the clock, 1-0 to Everton.
It set the tone for Grealish’s enterprising, man-of-the-match display in the 3-2 win over Wolves, where the 29-year-old also played a crucial role in Everton’s second before assisting Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall for the third – when he occupied a space between three Wolves players, some way in from the left wing, before playing the through ball.
“Jack De Bruyne does it again for Everton,” Manchester City’s Erling Haaland posted on his Snapchat, and you would have to agree. Roaming Jack is back, and Everton are the benefactors.
In just 197 minutes of league football Grealish has double the assists at Everton (four) than he managed across the past two campaigns at Manchester City in 1,716 minutes.
He has also attempted 8.7 dribbles per 90 minutes at Everton, and though early days this total exceeds his Aston Villa numbers and is far beyond any season tally under Pep Guardiola, who put positional discipline above risk and shackled Grealish’s wandering spirit.
David Moyes meanwhile is unlikely to change tact. Give the ball to Grealish and he will make something happen, especially when he has a point to prove.
“It’s nothing to do with me, let me tell you,” Everton’s manager said on Saturday, somewhat underplaying his own role when talking up Grealish’s attitude instead.
“He is even better than I thought,” Moyes added. “It’s all to do with Jack and his own mentality to be better. There’s a wee bit to prove, I’m sure, and I think Jack wants to show that he’s a good player… he’s showing it at the moment.”
Grealish is showing it currently because he has been given the license, by Moyes, to drift not for drifting’s sake but because his footballing intelligence is one of the best in the business, and because he thrives when taking players on and acting on instinct.
It is an approach that delivers a glorious middle-finger to the ways of Guardiola, flying in the face of tactics that have filtered their way down the English football pyramid and left League Two fans dismayed.
One such Guardiola obsession is ensuring his wingers stay wide. He spoke with Gary Neville on Monday Night Football back in 2018 about ensuring his wingers hug the touchline to make the pitch as big as possible, while in training a year prior he had drawn a chalk spot on the right wing for Raheem Sterling to return to whenever he dared stray elsewhere.
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Of course, it worked in many cases, Sterling above all, but not Grealish, who arguably fell into the trap of being the most-hyped English winger at the time of his switch from Villa to City in 2021.
A single productive (and treble-winning) campaign aside, Grealish never truly looked at home in a City shirt. He was not a Guardiola winger, and when he did come off the bench – as was often the case the past two seasons – he was being shoehorned into a system that never really suited him.
At Everton, it is already different. The opener at Wolves would never have come to fruition were he at City – the starting left winger out right and then central? Guardiola would not have allowed it.
But here he is. Using his intuition to unlock defences. Dictating the play and demanding the ball. Already looking more like the Villa Grealish in less than a month at Everton than he did across four years at City.
So no wonder the Everton fans can’t keep their hands off him, for with Grealish in their side they are daring to dream.
And for England, meanwhile, there is still time. He may have missed out on a September call-up but we know he remains in Thomas Tuchel’s thoughts during this World Cup season.
Should he carry on like this, he will play his way onto that plane to North America and perhaps even into the starting XI.
It remains one of England’s most open and therefore problem positions, and a thriving Grealish could yet grasp it for himself.