Why Jack Grealish’s transformation has him outshining Erling Haaland at Man City

Yeah, sure! Why can’t City be more like Real Madrid this season; seven La Liga defeats, five draws and out of contention with five rounds of matches still to play? You can’t accuse the team of Thibaut Courtois, Eder Militao, Luka Modric, Toni Kroos, Eduardo Camavinga, Aurelien Tchouameni, Federico Valverde, Vinicius Junior, Karim Benzema and Rodrygo of sucking the life from their league. Fourteen points behind Barcelona going into this weekend’s series of matches, their weekend performances have been taken from an a la carte menu. “La Liga, Senor?” “No, gracias.”

Guardiola is cut from a different cloth. Every competition, every game has to be won. The way they play and standards they set are non-negotiable. Moments of pure Guardiola are seared into our consciousness. Late in the second half of the Champions League quarter-final at the Allianz Arena last month, Ederson played a long pass to Jack Grealish which flew a foot over his head and out for a throw. The City attacker momentarily held his hands up in a “how was I supposed to get to that?” gesture. Guardiola was no more than five metres away. Big mistake, Jack. The manager unloaded on him. We don’t whinge. We don’t blame our team-mate.

Then, a week later, against Arsenal at the Etihad, John Stones strikes a long pass to Erling Haaland. The centre forward skilfully controls the ball and puts Kevin De Bruyne away with a precise pass. De Bruyne accelerates past Gabriel and scores. It’s the first goal in a key game.

Instinctively, Guardiola starts to celebrate but then remembers his annoyance at Ederson playing the safe pass to Stones and not the correct one to Rodri. So he stops celebrating and instead fires verbal missiles at the goalkeeper. That’s the reason they have a good chance of winning their fifth league title in six years. That’s the reason they’re in the FA Cup final. That’s the reason they are back in the Champions League ring against Real Madrid on Tuesday.

Of course the team have been strengthened by Haaland’s arrival from Borussia Dortmund but when you are recalling the 59 or 61 or 63 goals that Haaland ends up with, I shall be remembering Grealish’s performances through the second half of the season.

Grealish? He went to City in the summer of 2021 and arrived in early 2023. I remember when City agreed to pay Aston Villa £100 million. City had been trying to sign Harry Kane for much of that summer and Kane was keen. Tottenham Hotspur eventually said no and City thought, “Right, what do we do with the £100 million we’d set aside for Kane?”

Turned down by one club, they fell in with the next and married Grealish on the rebound. Never going to work, I thought. How could a player on such a long leash at Villa adjust to the rigid tactical discipline demanded at City? Grealish, I thought, wouldn’t get it.

That’s how it played that first season. The £100 million signing couldn’t be the player Guardiola needed him to be. Through the pre-World Cup months of this season, that’s how it continued. Then in late December everything changed. After a fine display in a 1-0 win away to Chelsea in early January, he talked about the difficulties of the transition. “When I came here, I’ll be honest with you, it was so much more difficult than I thought,” Grealish said. “In my head I was going to the team sitting top of the league and was going to get so many goals and assists and obviously it isn’t the case. A lot of teams sit in against us and that wasn’t the case at Villa.

“[At Villa] Dean Smith would tell me to go and find the weak link in the defence, whether that was on the right, the middle or whether I wanted to hug the touchline - and at Villa, I always had an overlapping full back. I came into City, having been at Villa my whole life, and didn’t realise how hard it is to adapt to a different team and manager.”

Grealish’s achievement has been impressive. Now he stays in his position wide on the left, a prerequisite for a Guardiola player. Instances of him giving the ball away are collectors’ items and he is conscientious in his pressing and tracking-back duties. That moment when he sprinted 60 metres to close down Mohamed Salah at the Etihad Stadium last month encapsulated the changed Grealish.

Not every fan warms to Grealish. An Arsenal-supporting friend calls him “the runt of the City litter”. People don’t like the frequency with which he falls over. It is true that he is an expert at “buying a free kick.” Quick feet and the ability to get his body between the ball and defender do the trick. How could you not laugh at Bayern’s right backs - Benjamin Pavard who started and Josip Stanisic who replaced him - both getting yellow-carded at the Allianz Arena for hacking down Grealish?

It is true too that Grealish has benefited from Haaland’s presence. With the centre forward scoring so many, no one wonders why the left-sided attacker scores so few. Given the contribution he makes to the team effort, Grealish deserves a pass on that. He was a clever footballer at Villa. He’s become a wise footballer at Manchester City. The difference is everything.

- The Times

Originally published as Why Jack Grealish’s transformation has him outshining Erling Haaland at Man City