Jack Grealish | Man City

Tbh id have him over Mount any day of the week.

Good career choice & doesnt need to turn in to a legend to have a successful career. Alot of the Barcelona players of the "greatest team ever" were more so due to the sum of its parts than individual ability in my eyes anyway.
 
Shaw's Shank Redemption said:
Tbh id have him over Mount any day of the week.

Good career choice & doesnt need to turn in to a legend to have a successful career. Alot of the Barcelona players of the "greatest team ever" were more so due to the sum of its parts than individual ability in my eyes anyway.
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Disrespecting the new Ronaldinho…
 
Shaw's Shank Redemption said:
Tbh id have him over Mount any day of the week.

Good career choice & doesnt need to turn in to a legend to have a successful career. Alot of the Barcelona players of the "greatest team ever" were more so due to the sum of its parts than individual ability in my eyes anyway.
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I like Grealish but £100m was too much. He’s not delivered so far.
 
A lot of peak Barca players were decent to good players made to look world class in the system.

Pedro, Affelay, Milito, Mascherano, Keita, etc
 
Apparently hasn't scored a goal in a calendar year for City? He's lucky it's Antony who is getting relentlessly memed.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
A lot of peak Barca players were decent to good players made to look world class in the system.

Pedro, Affelay, Milito, Mascherano, Keita, etc
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Don't think a system makes players look world class.

It more being surrounded by loads of top talent. Makes your job a lot easier.

For Grealish it's gone the other way. A genuinely talented player reduced to a very functional role.
 
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Eugenius said:
Apparently hasn't scored a goal in a calendar year for City? He's lucky it's Antony who is getting relentlessly memed.
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His last goal was on the 16th of December 2023. Imagine if he played for us, we'd never hear the end of it.
 
Pep got him by the balls. He is not a special talent in his system. Just a work horse.

"But boss I wear socks lower than most players and no shin pads"

Pep: "Well bicause youre stupid. Now go out there and run run run"
 
tenpoless said:
Pep got him by the balls. He is not a special talent in his system. Just a work horse.

"But boss I wear socks lower than most players and no shin pads"

Pep: "Well bicause youre stupid. Now go out there and run run run"
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Wonder if he had that drilled into him within the first week of being there.
 
Needs to go back to Villa and back to what made him an exciting player.
 
He's way too talented to have little to no output as it is currently.
City have ruined him. Doubt he cares though, won the CL and PL* (* for if they ever take those titles back)
 
Considering what they paid for him, I think he has been one of the worst ever signings in PL history, he hardly plays, and to me he looks completed lost in City’s system. I believe he should have gone to, say, Spurs or ourselves or even stayed at Villa for a couple more years.
 
cotumely said:
If he played for you, I think he would perform much better than he is doing at City.
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I think most people expected it to go like that when he signed at City. He'd win more there, but individually he wouldn't reach the level that he would have by joining most other teams. There was a small chance that they'd be able to marry the two parties perfectly and he'd go to yet another level, but by far the most likely scenario was that he'd losing his individuality in Pep's perfect little system.

His signing wasn't a complete flop as he had a fairly important role in the season they won the CL, but otherwise it's gone even worse than I expected. Which is good in some ways (it's City, duh), but it's also unfortunate as I can't remember the last EPL player I enjoyed watching play so much as a neutral as I did when Grealish was at Villa.
 
2.5 seasons left on his contract, he should be thinking about a move as it runs down.

A 29 years old he can't be happy playing in the Pep system, especially now that he has won everything.
 
To be fair at the time of going there a lot of people said he didn’t fit their style as his style needed a lot more freedom. He shut all of that down in his second year when he won the treble there, he was fantastic but in the end the predictions were right.

He’s been Pep’d. If Cole Palmer stayed at City he’d never be as exciting as he is now, it’s just the Pep way for those types of players.
 
Good player but was always over hyped. I would take him at Utd though.

City just hugely over paid IMO.
 
Hughes35 said:
Good player but was always over hyped. I would take him at Utd though.

City just hugely over paid IMO.
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Not now, he's 29 and would command wages at Rashford/Bruno level.

I wonder in the future if he'll think he wasted his career a little. On the one hand, he could not have won more trophies anywhere else, at least in the PL, but on the other, how many seasons has he been a starter + how much has he been a cog versus enjoying football + missing out England games because of it. I feel like he's best known now for getting battered at trophy parades than how exciting he was at Villa.
 
You really get the sense that City partly bought him to get a likeable England player to boost their popularity, and partly to deny him to other clubs where he could have been a real asset. There was a strange dynamic at one point, where he was being praised way too much for holding on to the ball and winning free kicks. His output in a pretty dominant City side has been underwhelming from day one - he just about averages a G/A in every 270 minutes for City.
 
Great player but utterly handcuffed in Peps system. Honestly, hes the sort of player that needs to be given a free role and few top clubs give that role to players like Grealish. A bizarre signing for City honestly.
 
The problem with this thread is you're all talking about Man City and then applying the rules and objective critique reserved for normal clubs. It doesn't work. At all.

Grealish doesn't have to do a single thing more to have been entirely worth his fee in relation to City's objectives before purchase. He was a key component in a treble. That's it. Done. Game's over. Mission completed.

What he goes on to do after that is incidental.

He's made a fortune. He's more successful than his wildest dreams at Villa and his profile was elevated at City. They have a treble and the CL - the same trophy PSG have spent a billion on 3 players - let alone the rest of the team - trying - and failing - to attain. They could have parted ways then, but even if he sees out the entirety of his contract there, he did what he was bought for, first and foremost.

Applying normal metrics of normal clubs, that care about the things City simply do not, is asinine, so saying he's a failure because X or Y is outperforming him at a normal club, or reimagining the reaction to what is permissible at City, serves no purpose.

They are a state-owned island and have very little to do with the trials and tribulations of real clubs, which is why they have struggled so much trying to pretend to care about regulations and the rest of it.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Not now, he's 29 and would command wages at Rashford/Bruno level.

I wonder in the future if he'll think he wasted his career a little. On the one hand, he could not have won more trophies anywhere else, at least in the PL, but on the other, how many seasons has he been a starter + how much has he been a cog versus enjoying football + missing out England games because of it. I feel like he's best known now for getting battered at trophy parades than how exciting he was at Villa.
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Oh agreed, it won't happen now and nor should it.
 
His fee doesn’t get talked about enough. Yet Antony gets criticised a lot. Wonder why…
 
AfonsoAlves said:
A lot of peak Barca players were decent to good players made to look world class in the system.

Pedro, Affelay, Milito, Mascherano, Keita, etc
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Mascherano was world class. If anything he looked worse for Barca than he would in other sides.

The others never looked world class and I've never heard anyone suggest they were.
 
I think the reason why the signing isn't being criticised as much as Antony is

(1) He had already proven himself in the EPL at Villa so the question isn't really on his own talent, as is the case with Antony, but rather that City have "ruined" him by not playing him enough.
(2) He's still living off the reputation from performances in the 22/23 season, where he did actually do well and had a role in City winning the treble. He played almost all games towards the end of the season and I think did decently as well.
(3) He's English so he will always get more protection in the media than a foreign player.
(4) City's success in the last 5 years makes it easier for the club to stay away from criticism. We've been crap for so long so when things are bad people will dig in more to find reasons and it inevitably will go to signings and how they have failed, even if the reasons match those of Grealish (Sancho is a prime example of not settling in).

He has been complete anonymous outside of the 22/23 season though and he's been at the club for 3.5 seasons now, it is fair to call him a flop in my opinion though he might still be a very good player.
 
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He was overhyped at Villa, good player but nothing special as the media made out. Both parties must regret each other.

Remember when he was compared to Beckham haha
 
Brazilian_Ronaldo_9 said:
He was overhyped at Villa, good player but nothing special as the media made out. Both parties must regret each other.

Remember when he was compared to Beckham haha
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I don't think he was overhyped, City overpaid for sure but he was an exciting talent. The positions in which he would have played for us were occupied by either Bruno or Rashford though, we were supposedly very interested for a while.

Villa were a poor team when he played for them but on coming up to the PL and the subsequent year he scored and made more goals in both seasons than he ever did at City. That's impressive. It would be like one of Leicester's wide attackers hitting ~15 G/A this season. Off the top of my head, Rafinha might be the last person to make that kind of impact when he came up with Leeds, they are different players but it's rare for a wide attacker in weaker teams to do so well for back to back years.
 
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