As Everton’s transfer committee weighed up their options for the summer 2025 transfer window, a marquee loan signing to help herald the start of a new era for the club at Bramley-Moore Dock under new ownership was high on their list of targets.
The man who ultimately fit the bill was Jack Grealish. Unwanted by Manchester City where, following a nine-figure move from Aston Villa in 2021, he had outlived his usefulness having helped the Eastlands club finally win the Champions League and three more Premier League crowns, the then 29-year-old was seeking a fresh challenge to bolster his hopes of making England’s 2026 World Cup squad.
With a compromise reached on the share of his eye-watering wages, variously reported as being between £300,000 and £350,000 per week, and the player sold on the Everton project by David Moyes, Grealish was unveiled last August as arguably the Toffees’ highest-profile acquisition since James Rodriguez arrived in 2020.
Like the Colombian star, Grealish’s impact was almost instant and even though, like James, his debut season with the Toffees has been wrecked by injury, the Brummie native has forged a strong rapport with Evertonians. It was no surprise, therefore, when reports surfaced last week that Everton were exploring a deal with City to bring the winger back to Merseyside next season.
In the opening weeks of the current campaign, Grealish was very much the face of what appeared to be a more dynamic Everton than the one that Moyes had been tasked with rescuing from relegation in January last years.
A substitute when he made his debut for the Toffees in the disappointing 1–0 defeat at Leeds on the opening day of the season, both Grealish and Everton appeared to have achieved lift-off the following weekend in the first ever top-flight fixture at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
He played a starring role in the stirring 2–0 win over Brighton that seemed to have ushered in that bright new era by the Mersey, claiming assists for both goals.
Grealish matched that feat on his second start, laying on goals for Beto and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall at Wolves in a 3–2 victory and probably should have had another assist to his name when his boyhood club came to town in mid-September in a 0–0 draw whose scoreline belied the host’s dominance on the day.
Three weeks later, as the gloss had started to come off the Blues’ good overall start to 2025/26 with defeats in the Merseyside derby and the League Cup against Wolves and another frustrating home draw, this time against struggling West Ham, Grealish finally celebrated his first goal for his loan club.
The stoppage-time winner he scored against Crystal Palace at the Dock was the new stadium’s first “limbs” moment and he followed it up with another decisive goal at Bournemouth to secure Everton’s first ever league win at Dean Court.
But while the team’s away form under Moyes remained impressive, losses at Manchester City and Chelsea notwithstanding, Everton weren’t able to string together successive wins at Hill Dickinson Stadium until this past month which was emblematic of the general erraticism that has plagued much of the campaign.
And before his season was prematurely ended by injury, Grealish could be just as mercurial as the team’s results. His deflected winner against the Cherries would be his last before he was forced to undergo surgery on a foot fracture and his influence as an attacking outlet would wane as well in the weeks that followed as Everton won just once between 6th December and mid-January.
If there was a general sense that a team grappling with deficiencies at full-back and going back and forth between two struggling strikers had become too reliant on their star loanee, it was, perhaps, borne out in what often felt like a policy of “give it Grealish”.
In other words, as has often been the case with Ndiaye when the team has been struggling: work the ball out to the flank where the loanee would invariably be anchored to the touchline and hope that he could produce a moment of magic. Often, without established patterns of attacking play and the requisite movement around him, that often meant the play would slow down or grind to a halt as Grealish, usually double- or triple-marked tried to draw opposition players towards him before trying to get around them or lay the ball off.
Still, if there was a feeling among some fans that he was a bit of a crutch in that way and there had been plenty of frustration at his dismissal for a second bookable offence against Wolves (when referee, Thomas Kirk, took umbrage at his sarcastic applause when a decision finally went the Blues’ way), Grealish’s work rate, particularly in away games, couldn’t be faulted.
Indeed, it was, perhaps, that heavy load after only playing a bit part in his last season in Manchester that led him to break down with stress fractures in January.
In his absence — not necessarily because of it but the extent to which the team has had to adapt their approach without him is an intriguing “unknowable” — Everton have found some form and momentum since back-to-back home defeats to Bournemouth and Manchester United in February. An excellent away win at Newcastle was followed by the first successive League wins at Hill Dickinson Stadium with a painful and undeserved 2-0 defeat at the home of the division leaders, Arsenal sandwiched in between.
While No 18 is sidelined, his team-mates are gunning for qualification for Europe, a stage very much made for Jack Grealish and should they achieve it, it would represent another pull factor for the one-time Villa hero to remain an Everton player.
If you listen to Grealish talk about the rapport he has built with the Toffees and Evertonians and take on board the fact that he has remained part of the setup at Finch Farm during his rehabilitation from surgery rather than return to City as would ordinarily be expected of a loanee, it seems as though the player would very much like to stay.
And while nothing has been made official, it has been widely reported since the turn of the year that Everton have been keen to work with Manchester City to structure an arrangement whereby they can bring keep Jack at the club.
Whether they should is a question that has been raised among fans; as popular as he is, it’s by no means a “no-brainer”. Certainly, if it were to be a permanent switch at the £50m that was part of the original loan deal struck last summer, the answer would almost certainly be no. (In reality, Everton were never going to to pay that.)
Grealish will turn 30 in the early part of 2026/27 and Everton have been down the road of awarding long, costly contracts to players either at or just past their peak many times in recent years.
And unless the winger was amenable to lowering his wages to facilitate a move, it’s debatable whether the mooted figure of £20m would make financial sense given the player’s age and recent injury concerns. On his current salary, a three-year deal would cost the Blues north of £65m all-in; again, an uncomfortable amount of cash for a player on the wrong side of 30.
Far better would be the compromise approach whereby City agree to loan him back to Everton for what will be the final year of his contract at the Etihad Stadium, with the latter covering his wages before signing him on a free transfer in the summer of 2027, if that’s what all parties decide is the best course of action. The player will have his suitors but it doesn't look like he wants to be anywhere other than Bramley-Moore Dock.
Recent results have shown that Grealish is not indispensable to Everton but, when fit, he was undoubtedly an exciting and important member of Moyes’s team. Not only is he bankable asset in terms of merchandising and media attention, if the Toffees are to secure a place in Europe for next season, his talents and experience could be invaluable.
Just as important, he buys into the project under The Friedkin Group and Moyes and wants to be here. Again, breaking the bank to keep him around wouldn’t be prudent but when everything is taken into account, a deal on terms favourable to Everton is something the hierarchy should certainly be pursuing.
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