Approaching a Year Without Manchester City Goal, Where Does Jack Grealish’s Future Lie?

If Jack Grealish fails to score in Sunday’s Manchester derby, he will have gone a year without a goal for Manchester City. Can Pep Guardiola help him rediscover his best form?

It’s August 2023. Manchester City are preparing to start the season defending titles in three major competitions, having just won the Champions League for the first time in their history as part of a historic treble.

Jack Grealish has the world at his feet. Manchester City’s record signing, a £100 million purchase from Aston Villa two years earlier, has just had the best season of his career, playing a key role in all three competitions and starting all of the biggest games. Only a handful of City players played more minutes in the Premier League, while nobody started more Champions League games than his 12, including every one of their seven knockout ties.

Just about everyone expected Grealish to kick on and have another memorable campaign. Few would have foreseen the fall that followed; one that was as stark as it was unexpected.

A hamstring injury suffered late in the August disrupted his start to 2023-24, and meant he missed six games for club and country before the end of September.

But he was back by the end of the month and had significant minutes under his belt by the time an October trip to the Emirates came around. But Grealish was an unused sub for that early-season title battle, a 1-0 defeat.

He worked his way back into the team in the following months, and a mini flurry of three goals in four games cemented his place in Pep Guardiola’s starting XI in his favoured position on the left side of the attack. In the process, he kept exciting new signing Jérémy Doku out of the team.

But his final goal in that run, scored in a 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace on 16 December 2023 – a result that left City fourth in the table and five points off leaders Arsenal – was to be his last for a long, long while.

If he doesn’t score in this Sunday’s Manchester derby, Monday will mark a full year since Grealish last scored a goal for City.

Since then, he has lost his place in the team, and is even finding that Matheus Nunes – who has barely got a game in his preferred central midfield role for City since his £53m move from Wolves – is being preferred to him on the left side of midfield.

There are mitigating factors, not least the groin injury he suffered in February this year that kept him out for seven games and from which he struggled to recover properly.

But he did earn his place back in the team towards the end of last season, only to play his way out of contention again. He remained an unused substitute for their last two crunch games in the title race at the end of the season – a must-win game at Tottenham and the match in which they won the title against West Ham on the final day – as well as the FA Cup final a week later.

Grealish ended 2023-24 with another Premier League winners’ medal, but he had started only 10 of a possible 38 games and contributed three more yellow cards (seven) than he did goal involvements (four – three goals, one assist). He featured in just 40% of possible minutes City played, despite being in the squad for 82% of them.

Jonny Whitmore / Senior Data Editor

He had been so unconvincing that he then failed to make the cut for Gareth Southgate’s Euro 2024 squad.

This season, there has been little improvement. Even after a summer reset, Grealish has not been able to get back to his best. He has been in and out of the City team, starting just five of their 15 Premier League games, three out of six in the Champions League, and one of two in the EFL Cup.

Again, injury problems have disrupted his season, with Guardiola citing “two or three setbacks in terms of injuries” meaning that Grealish has struggled to “get his rhythm,” but that isn’t enough to explain his ongoing disappointing form.

The best and probably most intriguing performance of the season came in the 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest last week, when Grealish was used as part of a double pivot at the base of midfield alongside Ilkay Gündogan. Doku was on the left, making this only the fourth time he and Grealish have started a Premier League game together, and the first that didn’t involve Doku playing on the right, where he is undoubtedly less comfortable.

After a victory that ended a run of seven winless games for Guardiola’s side, the City manager gushed at Grealish’s performance.

“Really good. He played in the middle and was involved in many things,” he said. “We controlled the game, and Jack gave us that pace. When to accelerate and [when to] control, he did it really good. I’m so happy for him.

“I know his quality. He has attributes to play holding midfield, keep the ball, break the lines and composure.”

At a time when City are struggling terribly for form and and lacking in adequate central midfielders with Rodri out for the season and Mateo Kovacic missing for the last month, Guardiola could do with another option in the middle.

But his second appearance in that position – on Wednesday night against Juventus – went rather less well. City lost 2-0, leaving them with eight points from six Champions League games so far, and needing to win both of their remaining games to keep alive any slim hope of automatic qualification for the knockout stage.

Grealish was hardly to blame, but while he circulated play well enough, completing 94.6% of his passes, he did little to influence the outcome of the game at the sharp end of the pitch other than one decent pass to Bernardo Silva, who should have done more with the opportunity.

The benefit of having both Grealish and Doku on the pitch is that they can team up on the left. Grealish is always going to drift out to that side – as he did when thriving in a central role for Aston Villa – and he did too against Juve.

Even if it didn’t quite work out on this occasion, the potential there is vast. It might well be that Guardiola persists with this experiment going forward. They will need time to make it work as well as it could.

But it would also be unfair to expect Grealish to produce his best from a deeper position. He will have much more defensive responsibility when playing in the middle, and that just isn’t a natural side to his game. Part of the reason he did so well centrally for Villa was that he was the team’s best player and was essentially free to go wherever he wanted. You don’t get that kind of freedom in a Guardiola set-up, so it’s difficult to see Grealish getting into a position to end his goal drought without more licence to get forward.

In Sunday’s Manchester derby, a game he might not even start, Grealish has his final chance to end his dry run before it reaches a full year.

There have been telling contributions this season. He got two assists in two games back in September, and he played a key role in catching Arsenal’s defence off guard as City scored a 98th-minute equaliser in their meeting in the same month.

But for a player who we know can produce so much more, who was integral in a treble-winning season only two years ago, who is arguably unique and one of the most talented English players of the last decade, it’s reasonable to expect even one goal in a whole year.

Granted, there is far more to his game, and there are other aspects to improve before he starts worrying about his goal tally.

But putting an end to this barren run could help reboot Grealish, and how City could do with him getting back to his best.

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