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Jack Grealish reveals surprising information regarding his early Man City career.
Jack Grealish has acknowledged that settling in at Manchester City has been “far more challenging” than he had anticipated.
The England international moved from his hometown club Aston Villa to the Etihad Stadium for £100 million in 2021, but he has yet to have the impact that most people would anticipate from the sixth-most-expensive player in football history.
Grealish has scored just four Premier League goals for his new team to this point, and boss Pep Guardiola has previously acknowledged that the former captain of Villa must score more.
Speaking to Sky Sports, following City’s 1-0 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Thursday evening, Grealish admitted that he has been disappointed with his own lack of goal contributions at the club and admitted the adaptation had taken him by a surprise.
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“When I came here, I’ll be honest with you, it was so much more difficult than I thought,” the 27-year-old said.
“In my head I thought I was going to the team sitting top of the league and I was going to get so many goals and assists and obviously it isn’t the case. A lot of teams tend to sit in against us and that wasn’t the case 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 I’ve never had to change. I’ve always been used to that. I didn’t realise how hard it is to adapt to a different team and manager.”
In his debut year at the Etihad, Grealish started 22 games for City, and under Guardiola, he has once more been a regular rotation player. Grealish has participated in 11 of the 17 games they have played so far in 2022–2023, only starting eight of them.