Noel Sliney, BBC Sport:<\/b><\/p>\n
It has been a chastening two years for Jack Grealish, since he enjoyed the most successful season of his career. <\/p>\n
He had played an integral role in Manchester City’s historic Treble in 2022-23, starting the FA Cup final and every one of their seven knockout ties as the club won the Champions League for the first time. <\/p>\n
Only six outfield City players spent more time on the pitch than Grealish in the Premier League too.<\/p>\n
A hamstring injury halted his momentum early in 2023-24, which the England playmaker ended with more yellow cards (seven) than combined goals and assists (six) across all competitions. <\/p>\n
He featured in just 40% of the total minutes played by City despite being in the squad for 82% of them.<\/p>\n
His involvement dropped to 30% last term as Grealish’s career plummeted to its nadir. Three of his six starts after Christmas came against lower-league opposition in the FA Cup, while 16 starts in total is his fewest in a campaign since he was 20 years old. <\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, it has also been his least productive season in terms of chances created and dribbling success since returning to the Premier League in 2019.<\/p>\n
City’s team structure has seldom afforded Grealish the license to take on and glide past opponents as he did with such insouciance as the talismanic captain at boyhood club Aston Villa. <\/p>\n
The question now is whether the affable 29-year-old can reverse the downward trajectory of his career – and who will give him the opportunity to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noel Sliney, BBC Sport: It has been a chastening two years for Jack Grealish, since he enjoyed the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-335456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}