“Maybe he listened too much to what the people say”, Pep Guardiola Defends Jack Grealish’s Questionable Numbers
There was a swash-buckling hue and cry when Jack Grealish was swooped in by Manchester City, practically making them an unplayable team on the papers. However, the English midfielder has lacked the killer touch ever since his arrival at Etihad.
Media has continued its perennial hounding around Guardiola and Jack Grealish, trying to scrutinize every single move that the Englishman has pulled off for the Manchester Blues.
However, being the iconic manager that Guardiola is, he stood by the erstwhile Aston Villa attacker and assured him that he will continue to be the heart of his plans for the upcoming season. He has been asked to focus on playing his game than fret about his numbers and trophies.
With City desperate for first blood and the clock showing 77 minutes, Guardiola let Grealish be on the bench while he turned at Riyad Mahrez to deliver him the goods. Grealish’s current numbers in the ongoing season read three goals and three assists which is quite an underperformance for the English sharpshooter.
This is what Pep Guardiola had to say about Jack Grealish
Grealish has already quoted previously that he wants his own statistics to be better and he is working diligently towards it. He also stated that the goals and the assists are something that is of crucial importance to the City attacker.
Guardiola, however, has made things clear that it is not how the process at City functions. According to the Spanish boss, he has a plan for everyone and in order for Manchester City to succeed, it is important that every individual carries out their role with distinction.
The City preceptor clearly seemed happy with Grealish’s performance so far and admitted the fact that the City midfielder has performed exactly the way he wanted him to.
Guardiola quoted to the press, “Maybe he listened too much to what the people say. It’s wrong but the statistics are better and he plays quite similar to Aston Villa in terms of ball contact.
“He had the chances against Crystal Palace in 20 minutes to score three goals. It didn’t happen but it’s going to happen. We didn’t buy him to score 45 goals.”
Guardiola has been pretty happy with the way how Grealish has performed ahead of the defences, opening up small pockets of space between the opposition defence and midfield and bringing his dribbling ability to the fullest play that is allowing his team to attack with an even more aggressive undertone to their forays.
Even though Grealish was left frustrated by Oriol Romeu against Southampton and to make matters worse City’s untenable juggernaut crashed onto the Soton wall. Guardiola seemed unfazed with a rare failure as he quoted, “It’s how you play today if you perform to your maximum, to your best, help your team-mates to make the process defensively and offensively better, it’s enough. Thanks to that we are going to win.”
He concluded by saying, “Everyone has agents and managers and everything, and say what they have to do better and they listen to a lot of things about what they have to do. He’s playing well. If he wasn’t, I would tell him. That is not the case.”
It will be important to see how he delivers when Guardiola’s men will be colliding with their city rivals on the weekend as they will be coming on the back of an important clash against Peterborough in the 5th round of the FA Cup.
