Jack Grealish Watch

RealGunner wrote:

Jack Grealish against PSG pic.twitter.com/P9A3FfaKYS

— FutbolBible (@FutbolBible) September 28, 2021

lmaooooooooooooooo I can't breathe

wow... i mean he does nothing. Just has sexy calves (according to my wife) and that's about it.

139m euros seems a bit much for sexy calves and sideways dribbling

Myesyats wrote:139m euros seems a bit much for sexy calves and sideways dribbling

Then again, Real Madrid paid 100m for an overweight backwards dribbler

El Gunner wrote:take to heart my analysis on him in the PL thread after the Chelsea game... Pep is playing a losing game if he plays him in these type of matches. Grealish is there to drive the ball forward against the likes of Burnley and Norwich so that commentators can gush over him and try their best to make his price tag seem justified.

You're so right. OK, so you couldn't get Harry Kane... how about going after another goal scorer?

I always wanted to see Giroud in a Pep Guardiola team. They should have signed him.

Hapless_Hans wrote:

Myesyats wrote:139m euros seems a bit much for sexy calves and sideways dribbling

Then again, Real Madrid paid 100m for an overweight backwards dribbler

Backwards dribbling the most underrated skill in football. Only true students of the game understand its immense value

He can’t keep starting big games can he? Oh wait, Raheem Sterling is on the bench. Guess Grealish will continue to start then. But anyway, Pep is a real dummy if he had anything to do with this signing.
Given how he already destroyed one GOAT team with that dumbass signing of Cesc Fabregas I could believe it.

I know most City players take a season to adapt under Pep, and a lot of them struggle in their first season, but Grealish has looked so off.

Pep won't play him in midfield because he'd rather play Bernardo/KDB/Gundogan there, so Grealish either has to play as a touchline hugging LW or a false 9. He looks awkward in both roles. Although he's good at carrying the ball from deep, he's not good at 1v1s. So he'll square up against his fullback, fail to go past him, then proceed to sideways pass it every time. Even as a false 9, he looks completely lost.

Grealish himself said he was struggling to adapt. He said that he thought he'd be touching the ball a lot more because of City's high possession count, but instead he is fixed to a position and has to wait for the ball to come to him.

He used to be a ball rapist at Villa where the play constantly had to go through him, and he had to take 100 touches every time he received the ball and he was free to roam wherever, but now he's having a real shock of what it is really like playing at City.

The thing is I see the potential in him. I'm not even talking about his dribbling ability or his chance creation, but his ability to pause on the ball is at a ridiculously high level. His timing when it comes to releasing a pass is so good. He'll be on the dribble making the defender hesitate then play a pass when the defender least expects it. It's that specific trait that makes him so dangerous. It helps create a gravity around him where the opposition defenders tilt closer to him which opens up space for the other players around him.

It's one thing to be an attacking midfielder who can dribble, pass, and even shoot. What really makes you elite is timing and tempo. Grealish has the skillset, I just don't think it'll truly come out until he plays more centrally, but he probably won't be given the chance any time soon.

Grealish is a central player by nature. Most central players who are big fish in small ponds struggle in bigger more relevant teams when everything is not going through them though.


Players who are central by nature playing wide has been a criminal misuse in the last decade as they are sacrificed outside and resort to cutting in rather than the wide tendencies of someone who is naturally wide.

Grealish is bound to adapt given his skillset but some adapt slower than others and Pep's system is not meant to enhance the player but have the player enhance the system itself albeit once they fit in.

Way too early to judge him.

I really like Cas' analysis (I usually do most of the time) and I fully agree to it, however, if it weren't for the fact Jackie is English and Pep is clearly liked by the media, he would have been called a flop signing all now.

100M for someone who is good at retaining the ball

Unreal levels of cope. Please don't let this kind of analysis fool you.

Just a few days ago he said in an interview how the criticism gets to him, I wonder how much he paid this guy to put out this crock shit analysis.

Myesyats wrote:Just a few days ago he said in an interview how the criticism gets to him,  I wonder how much he paid this guy to put out this crock shit analysis.

They're justifying him because he does the bare minimum. The only thing I can give him credit for is that he doesn't lose the ball when he carries it and it brings a lot more control. In contrast, Dembele losing the ball half the time is incredibly annoying.

What it does though is it completely ignores what Jack can't do and it's provide those game changing moments. He doesn't score goals and he doesn't assist. You can't get away with having a starting winger provide such little end product.

His dribbling 1v1 is meh. He's incredibly limited when squaring up against the fullback. He can't dribble to the byline because his left foot is ass, so he has to cut inside. When he cuts inside he's limited because he doesn't have that burst of pace to get past his fullback, nor does he have the shooting ability or crossing ability to curl it in.

He isn't even fast enough to do basic attacking patterns like making an out-inside run. He doesn't attack the posts, although he did score like that recently. He's not really good in the air.

His decision making on the ball can be shocking. He feels the need to take multiple touches every time he's on the ball instead of releasing it.

His range of passing is meh. I've never seen him switch the ball to the opposite flank. He only makes killer passes once he's dribbled up the pitch and there's oceans of space in front of him.

I've seen people claim him winning fouls is a good thing. I've always been conflicted on foul merchants. Yes, winning fouls means the opposition gets yellow cards and you can get free kicks in potentially dangerous areas. However, there's a difference between Messi dribbling centrally through 2-3 players and getting a free kick 25M out versus Grealish dribbling backward because he doesn't want to release the ball so he gets kicked on his ankles instead. All foul fishing like that does is break up the flow of the game. Pep realizes this that's why he brought Grealish on against Atletico in the last 10 minutes of the game to help see out the lead lmfao.

At the very minimum, he doesn't even have elite level workrate the way Bernardo does.

If he was signed to be a winger then there is no 100M level attacking quality out there. He has two unique skills which are his ball carrying and pausa. He can carry the ball centrally and dribble past players that way and he's safe doing so. He also has ridiculous levels of pausa, so he's able to shift multiple defenders near him which opens up spaces for others.

He's a luxury attacking midfielder. At Aston Villa he played on the left, but he had the freedom to roam wherever. He was the technical leader in the team, and he was playing inside with a fullback overlapping him. At City, he's hugging the touchline and he looks awful.

If he was intelligent (which he isn't), then maybe moving to CM would help unlock him under Pep's system. I don't see Pep playing Grealish as a CM any time soon. So unless Grealish magically adapts then this will continue to be a Coutinho-level signing. He's everything I hated about Mahrez, but at least Mahrez has end product and can provide big moments.

Casciavit wrote:

100M for someone who is good at retaining the ball

Unreal levels of cope. Please don't let this kind of analysis fool you.

Videos like these are by far the most pretentious pieces of football content in the world.

To stereotype it usually if not almost always they are people heavily into glorifying the fuck out Total Football, Cryff, prime golden Barça and of course Pep.

You had this breed reemerge around that time who would analyse why Chirgrynsky is a genius signing. The worst of it was when Pep signed for Barça and all the geniuses came out making countless videos of why Götze will slot in to his system forgetting he didn't even use his original system for Bayern.

Same type of people hyped up that clown Oscar for Chelsea and accusing anyone who doesn't know the micro-passes of football as not knowing a thing about football. Same idiots thought Jorginho should have won the Ballon D'or

The orange-tinted way for these inviduals is.

Use a lot of confirmation bias akin to seeing a star of david in the middle of the Roman map therefore illuminati. Draw a fuck ton of lines and squiggles as if you are John Madden in your prime. Make outstanding assumptions and sound like a complete melt overall speaking of it.

I liked Grelish overall but turns out he is well out of his depth at this level and was just a big fish in a small pond now in a pond far too large for his and his shit haircuts


People also need to know despite his improvements in leadership and scouting Pep historically makes very very bad choices in signings.

At Barca his signing record wasn't good. I'd say Alves and Villa were the only good big money signings, and Villa tore his ACL after one season. The big money signings like Chygrynskiy, Zlatan, Cesc, and Alexis never really hit expectations during their time there.

I'm not sure how much of an influence he had at Bayern, but his signing record there was quite good IMO. When he first joined he said he wanted Neymar and Thiago. Bayern couldn't get Neymar so they got him Gotze. Gotze flopped and Thiago was injured most of the time under Pep, but his best performances came after Pep left. Lewa, Vidal, Alonso, Kimmich, Costa, and Coman all did well under Pep.

I'd say his signing record at City has been great. I'm not the biggest fan of the profiles he's gone for, but you can't say too many of them have been flops. The only players who you could say without a shadow of a doubt were flops were Bravo, Mendy, and Nolito. Grealish could be joining that list if he doesn't step up. Considering they've bought a shit ton of players in the last 6 years that's actually a very good return.

It seems to me like the trend is he struggles to fit in slower, more traditional 10s like Cesc, Gotze, and Grealish who were the technical leaders of their old teams. He diminishes their responsibility on the ball then decides to shoehorn them as a winger, CM, or false 9. If you're an attacking midfielder who had the freedom to roam and then suddenly you're played in a different position, see less of the ball, have to stay in your specific spaces, constantly told that you're not allowed to lose the ball when before you could take as many risks as you want with it, and now you have to play in a much more complex and rigid tactical system then that is a recipe to making them lose their confidence.

Now that I think of it it's actually no surprise that the attacking midfielders who adapted to becoming a Pep CM were either players who didn't care about their touches like KDB and Muller, or technically superior midgets who were extremely nimble and intelligent like Silva, Iniesta, and Bernardo. The whole basis of positional play is that the ball will come to you, not the other way around. Traditional attacking midfielders struggle with that concept since they're so used to having the freedom of being able to roam where they want, pick the ball up whenever they want it, and then take as many risks with the ball as they want when they have it.

Mendy was good in his first season pre injury, iirc

Casciavit wrote:Now that I think of it it's actually no surprise that the attacking midfielders who adapted to becoming a Pep CM were either players who didn't care about their touches like KDB and Muller, or technically superior midgets who were extremely nimble and intelligent like Silva, Iniesta, and Bernardo. The whole basis of positional play is that the ball will come to you, not the other way around. Traditional attacking midfielders struggle with that concept since they're so used to having the freedom of being able to roam where they want, pick the ball up whenever they want it, and then take as many risks with the ball as they want when they have it.

Messi?

Why Jack Grealish is Perfect for Pep Guardiola. part 2

He has been very good, perfect player to play alongside a goal machine like Haaland.