Talking Point: Everton have recorded potentially season-defining back-to-back wins over Newcastle United without Jack Grealish, so are they now better without him?
Jack Grealish of Everton
Jack Grealish of Everton(Image: Photo by Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
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David Moyes claims he doesn’t know when Jack Grealish is going to be available again but Everton have been doing just fine during his absence from the side.
In truth, the Blues have actually been doing much better than that and in the space of just five days, they have pulled off a brace of victories over Newcastle United that are potentially season-defining results to pose the million-dollar question - or perhaps the £100million question in Grealish’s case, given that he was the first English footballer to go for that landmark nine-figure fee when he moved from Aston Villa to Manchester City in 2021 - are Everton actually better off without him?
The short-term answer at least is a resounding yes.
From the moment that Pep Guardiola made Grealish surplus to requirements at the Etihad Stadium in June last year, leaving him out of his squad for the FIFA Club World Cup in the USA and letting it be known in no uncertain terms that if he wanted playing minutes then it would have to be elsewhere, he was pursued by the Blues with Moyes understood to have taken him out to dinner, explaining what his role would be.
He was the glamorous, marquee signing to provide a sprinkling of stardust as Everton moved from their beloved but antiquated long-time home of Goodison Park to their shiny, new 52,769-capacity Hill Dickinson Stadium, resplendent on the banks of the Mersey and enabling them to play in front of their biggest ever regular crowds (breaking their average attendance record in 2025/26).
To be fair, Grealish started brightly in his new surroundings. Four assists in his first two starts saw him named Premier League Player of the Month for the first time in the week of his 30th birthday.
There was a little piece of history too as Grealish netted the first stoppage-time winner at Hill Dickinson Stadium - a moment that felt like the roof came off - with the Blues recovering from a goal down to defeat a Crystal Palace side who were riding the crest of a wave, having gone into the game on the back of their own record-breaking 19-match unbeaten run that had included an FA Cup triumph against Manchester City to lift the first major trophy in their history (we’re not counting the 4-1 drubbing of Everton in the 1991 Zenith Data Systems Cup when Neville Southall refused to collect his runners-up medal).
It was just a shame that the man paying Grealish’s gargantuan wages - he's understood to be the Blues’ highest earner - chairman Dan Friedkin wasn’t present to witness the landmark moment. The Texan tycoon had been in the UK the previous day, making his annual golf pilgrimage to St Andrews, playing in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, but rather than stopping off in Liverpool, he went straight to Rome to host the European Football Clubs (ironically, EFC) General Assembly, a trip on which he was photographed glad-handing Roma's coach and players on the training ground.
It turns out, of course, that stayaway and now want-away Everton owner Friedkin has spoken more to his caddie than he ever has to Moyes, never mind even attending a game.
Grealish also netted the winner in the Blues’ first-ever Premier League win at Bournemouth in December - a night on which he proclaimed that he loved the manager, remarks that put the Glaswegian gaffer on the back foot as the oldest current boss in England’s top flight claims not to be used to being liked by his players. However, the Brummie ace’s season came to an abrupt halt just past the halfway stage the following month when he suffered a stress fracture injury in his left foot during a 1-0 win at his first club Aston Villa, a setback that ensured he wouldn’t kick a ball again until August.
Moyes - and Everton top brass - displayed another leap of faith to bring Grealish back on transfer deadline day this year but unfortunately, he has let them - and the thousands of supporters who have taken him to their hearts - down badly with this latest misdemeanour.
With the way that he can play at his own pace, slow the game down and win clever free-kicks - an exemplar of this kind of display was evident with how he performed in the 1-0 win at Manchester United last season when the Blues became the first side to defeat the Red Devils in a Premier League game at Old Trafford after being reduced to 10 men - suggested the 31-year-old might have been primed to go straight back in at St James’ Park after missing the previous fixture against Newcastle United just four nights earlier.
However, without him, Everton dominated proceedings against Matthias Jaissle’s hapless rabble, who now look a shadow of the side that ended the Magpies’ 70-year domestic trophy drought in 2025, and they should have triumphed by much more than the final 1-0 scoreline.
Instead, the Blues possessed explosive pace down both flanks, with the athletic Merlin Rohl powering down the right and Grealish's usual spot on the left going to the tricky Tyrique George, who is his junior by more than a decade. It might not have been pretty but the only goal of the game came from George popping the question and, on what were increasingly slippery conditions as the rain lashed down in Tyneside, putting in a shot that was too hot to handle for Lukas Hornicek, who allowed the ball to slip through his fingers and provide striker Thierno Barry with a tap-in.
As Moyes acknowledged in the post-match press conference, there is of course a way back for Grealish in the longer term. With the cost of bringing the player back and Everton's ridiculously small squad of just 18 outfield players, this is no time for drastic measures, but even if the attacking midfielder does regain his match fitness to become available for selection at home to Coventry City in Friday’s final fixture before the second international break this term, the dynamics of this side have changed and he no longer looks like the key man he once was.