Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola spoke about Jack Grealish and others in his dressing room wanting to play more minutes
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Manchester City winger Jack Grealish
Manchester City winger Jack Grealish(Image: Getty Images)
Pep Guardiola said he expected frustrated players in his Manchester City squad as discussions over Jack Grealish's future are set for the summer. The Manchester City winger was an unused substitute in the FA Cup final as his struggle for game time continues.
Grealish has made just one Premier League start in 2025 - against Leicester, where he opened the scoring inside two minutes. His only other starts in five months have been Salford City, Leyton Orient, Real Madrid, Plymouth, and Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup.
It has been a peculiar season for the former Villa man, who intended to fight hard to prove critics wrong after a drop in form last season saw him miss out on the England squad for the European Championship. Injuries have cost him regularly through the season, but despite being used so scarcely some of his appearances have been in the most important ones for City.
That did not extend to the FA Cup final though, and Grealish watched on from the bench as Guardiola threw debutant Claudio Echeverri on to try to get an equaliser against Crystal Palace rather than the player signed for £100m four years ago. With competition for a place only set to increase in the summer, pundit Alan Shearer made headlines this week by saying Grealish has to leave.
"His time is up at Man City. He has to leave," he said on The Rest Is Football podcast. "For Pep Guardiola to bring on a debutant, a young boy, and Gundogan rather than Jack Grealish when Man City are desperate for a goal… his time is up.
"He’s done at Man City, he has to leave. For whatever reason Pep is done with him, he doesn’t like him. His time is up, it really is."
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Guardiola wasn't going to get into discussions that will be held between the player's representatives and the club's recruitment team, but finds himself in a familiar situation. The City manager said that nobody is unhappy when they don't play and that this extended to every other team, but also some City players who didn't make the FA Cup final squad at all.
"What is going to happen is going to happen. But of course they have to come back to play minutes, to start to play again, that's for sure," he said."But not (just) Jack. There is not one player in my locker room, and I think all the locker rooms in and around the world, that they are happy or they are not happy, or have bad faces, because players don't play. I never, never see that.
"Of course they are unsatisfied, but not just Jack. Macca and Rico were and Kova, who was a little bit injured and I didn't want to expose that. And all the players are unhappy, and they let you know that they aren't happy.
"We're in situations when the team is winning, winning, they have to figure out that everything happened, but they aren't happy. They are here to play, and they don't play, they are unsatisfied. That is a normal position in all the clubs."
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