Jack Grealish celebrates his 30th birthday today but how have his statistics for Everton so far compared to Manchester City last season?
With four assists in his first two Premier League starts, birthday boy Jack Grealish – 30 today – has made a dream start at Everton.
Those displays, setting up goals for Iliman Ndiaye and James Garner in the 2-0 win over Brighton & Hove Albion and then for Beto and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall in the 3-2 victory at Wolverhampton Wanderers have ensured the England international has been named on a list of eight candidates to be EA Sports Premier League Player of the Month for August.
Grealish became the first £100million Englishman when he moved from Aston Villa to Manchester City in 2021, but in days gone by, reaching your 30th birthday was often considered something of a landmark for outfield players as they were deemed to have moved into the ‘veteran’ category.
Dixie Dean, Everton’s all-time leading goalscorer, who netted his record 60 league goals in a season when he was just 21, was 30 when he played the last of his 433 matches for the Blues (having registered on 383 occasions) in 1937 but there have been many advances in sports science since then, both in terms of monitoring fitness levels and physical demands, players’ diet and the medical attention they receive.
In more recent years, the likes of Gareth Barry (33), another recruit from the Etihad Stadium; Sylvain Distin (31) and Richard Gough (37) were all considerably older than Grealish when they signed for Everton and all went on to represent the club with distinction.
Also, what about Ashley (not so) Young? He was 38 when he arrived at Goodison Park in 2023, the age at which Roger Milla starred for Cameroon at the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy and it’s also the age at which David Moyes started his first stint as Everton manager.
Young, for his part, remained with the Blues to just shy of his 40th birthday, becoming their oldest-ever outfield player, turning out 70 times, and with his free-kick goal in the 4-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers last season, their oldest ever scorer. All this suggests that the super-fit Grealish, who included Everton old boy Wayne Rooney among the guests at his 30th birthday party last weekend, could still have plenty more years left at the top.
Using Comparisonator’s Me2Me tool, we can examine just what the on-loan player is doing differently for Moyes so far this term compared to his displays for Pep Guardiola last season. Based on a per 90 minutes average, Grealish is calculated has producing a 9% increase when it comes to his Artificial Intelligence points overall, going up from 382 to 416.
While his offensive A.I. points are down 43% from 209 to 118, his defensive A.I. points show a gargantuan 350% increase from 8.85 to 39.93; his passing A.I. points have doubled from 102 to 204 and his duels A.I. points also show a slight increase from 26.57 to 27.18.
Jack Grealish's Artificial Intelligence points scores calculated by Comparisonator for last season (left) and this season so far (right)
Jack Grealish's Artificial Intelligence points scores calculated by Comparisonator for last season (left) and this season so far (right)
But how about some more tangible numbers? There are of course those aforementioned assists and they’re par for the course as Grealish’s expected assists figure has jumped from 0.27 to 0.47 while his successful dribble percentage has gone up from 53% to 76%.
When it comes to distribution, the overall figures are down with his average number of passes reduced from 43.42 to 34.23 and successful passes from 36.89 to 29.58 but then the tactics of Guardiola’s possession-heavy style could be set to have stifled Grealish. Despite such falls, the Brummie ace is actually being more potent when he’s got the ball though as there are increases in his passes to the final third (1.49 to 2.96); successful passes to the final third (1.3 to 2.11) and key passes (1.12 to 1.27).
Grealish is maintaining possession better with ball losses down from 8.01 to 6.76 and he’s also working relentlessly to win it back with ball recoveries up from 2.42 to 5.49, and in his own half this figure has increased from 0.56 to 1.69. He’s also showing no signs of slowing down with his physical figures as his 9.053km covered per 90 minutes comparable to the 9.282km with Manchester City last season and he’s already edged out his top speed of 32.23km/h by clocking 32.36km/h.
*Comparisonator is a football data comparison tool from 271 professional leagues around the world which compares players and clubs by utilising over 100 different parameters. Click here for more details.