Jack Grealish has the chance to revive his career after completing a loan move to Everton. Can the maverick who helped Manchester City win the treble get back to something like his best?
As Jack Grealish approaches his 30th birthday next month, it is only slightly dramatic to say he needs to make a success of this move.
A loan to Everton has handed the winger, a key cog in Manchester City’s treble-winning side of 2022-23, the opportunity to revive his ailing career.
Given where he was only two years ago, on top of the footballing world, this feels like an almighty fall.
But a move away from Man City has felt like it might be inevitable for a little while now. The fall actually came quite a long time ago.
Grealish played 90 minutes in the Champions League final win over Inter in May 2023. He played 89 minutes in the FA Cup final against Manchester United that same month, only withdrawn for Pep Guardiola to introduce an extra centre-back to see out the final moments of a 2-1 victory. His Premier League minutes were managed to keep him fresh, but he was still among the players Guardiola valued most. He started the biggest games and proved vital in many of them.
After a summer of, well, enjoying himself, injuries disrupted the start of the following season, and his City career never really recovered. He certainly never got back to his best in City blue. He managed only 1,004 minutes in the Premier League in 2023-24 – less than half the previous season – and looked less and less effective when he did play. He was left “heartbroken” after failing to make it into the England squad for Euro 2024 at the end of that season.
In the increasingly sanitised world of sport, Grealish is a loveably normal character, and the group of people who wanted to see him get back to his best stretched far further than the City fanbase.
Unfortunately, though, 2024-25 was even less fruitful. Even with City struggling on all fronts, Grealish could barely get a game. Despite being in the squad 82% of the time, he played just 30% of available minutes for City. His goal in an 8-0 FA Cup win over Salford City in January was his first goal for the club in more than a year. The standard of his performances was a far cry from 2022-23.
Jack Grealish minutes played and availability by season
There have been a few small niggles since then that disrupted his chances of getting a run of games and any momentum, but they alone can’t explain his decline. It is difficult to say for sure what the main reason is.
What we can say with some certainty is that a fresh start feels like it is for the best.
So, can Everton rediscover some of Grealish’s lost magic? Can they get him back to anything like his best?
The environment at Everton won’t be anything like it is at City. There are few properly elite players there, there’ll be no European football, and expectations are much, much lower.
His new side will also have far less of the ball than City do, and Grealish will have to get used to doing more defending than he has done in a few years.
But while he hasn’t done it in a while, this won’t be a complete shock to him. Grealish has some experience of playing for a team more like Everton than City, and he produced some of his best and most exciting football there, too.
At his boyhood club, Aston Villa, Grealish thrived as the main man in a team who were relegated to the Championship, promoted again, and then battled in the bottom half of the table for his final two years there.
He was allowed to roam the pitch, essentially instructed to go wherever he felt he could best influence the game. He was also their captain and most important player.
“I had more freedom at Aston Villa,” he said of his period of adaptation at City. “I had a lot more of the ball at Villa, whereas here [at City] you probably don’t touch the ball as much because you have so many world-class players.”
The stats show that Grealish wasn’t quite right: he didn’t touch the ball more for Villa. However, he did have more touches relative to the amount of the ball his team saw; he had a higher proportion of Villa’s touches.
He also – in a sign of that “freedom” he talked of – made more dribble attempts. In each of his final three Premier League seasons at Villa, he averaged more attempted dribbles per 90 (between 3.8 and 5.5 per 90) than in any of his four seasons at City (between 2.6 and 3.5 per 90).
In those three seasons, dribbles made up a higher proportion of his touches (between 6.1% and 10.4%) than they did in any of his four seasons at City (between 3.8% and 5.7%).
He also took up more central positions at Villa. Many more of his appearances came in central midfield or in a number 10 position, but even when he played on the left, he was also allowed to come off the flank in search of space. When he played in the middle, he would drift out to the right, or drop deeper to get on the ball.
Jack Grealish touch map for Aston Villa
Jack Grealish touch map for Man City
At City, he played 87% of his Premier League minutes on the left, and there were more rules about where he could go in Pep’s juego de posición (positional play).
He was clearly very, very effective at City. There’s no doubt that Guardiola did a tremendous job of developing Grealish’s game. The midfielder called the City manager a “genius” after they won the Champions League together.
Jack Grealish positions played for Aston Villa 2020-22
Jack Grealish positions played for Man City
But there is also something to be said for letting someone like Grealish, an off-the-cuff dribbler and creator, play with the freedom he had at Villa. He is likely to have a little more of that at Everton, even if manager David Moyes won’t entirely indulge his attacking talents.
Chance creation was a real problem for Everton last season. Only the three relegated teams generated a lower expected goals total in open play than them (28.8 xG – and average of just 0.76 xG per game), so Grealish’s creativity could prove very welcome. He created almost twice as many chances in open play per 90 last season (2.9) as any Everton player (Charly Alcaraz – 1.5). The fact he was playing for City rather than Everton would be a big part of the reason for that, but it’s also a stark difference in what was his worst season in years.
The challenge for Moyes is to get Grealish back to something like his best with any kind of consistency. He has only got two assists in his last 29 hours of Premier League action, and Everton will need to see a big improvement in those numbers for this move to be considered a success.
With Iliman Ndiaye playing in the middle, Grealish will probably be playing on the left at Everton, but few will expect him to stick to the wing anything like as religiously as he did at City.
There are a lot of people who would love to see Jack Grealish back to his happy, unstoppable best, not least Moyes himself. If he can do that, we’re all in for a treat.
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