Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has sketched his hope that Jack Grealishe can rediscover his consistency before the end of the season, after he has endured a difficult year.
This season, Grealisk has made 24 performances in all matches for City, but only 13 of them have started and he only scored twice against Salford City in the FA Cup and Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League.
His decline extends to last season, when he made only 26 starts and scored three goals, eventually dropped from Gareth Southgate's England team for Euro 2024.
The former Aston Villa-man-Die was an important player when City won the Treble in 2022-23-has struggled with a hip injury in recent days, but traveled to Spain for the Do-Or-Die Champions League meeting of Wednesday with Real Madrid.
He was replaced in the early stages of the first stage of last week, when City 1-0 and 2-1 Leads only collapsed for a 3-2 defeat.
Asked why Grealisk is missing Saturday's 4-0 win over Newcastle United, Guardiola said: “He is able to play a really good game like in the FA Cup, but not the consistency to play with three every week competitions.
“It's the same with six games in two weeks. He couldn't do it, but hopefully in the three and a half months we have before the end of the season, he can get it.”
Fut [On Jack Grealish] He was able to play a really good game in the FA Cup, but he does not have the consistency to play three games a week, he couldn't do it. Hopefully he is now able to get it in the last few months of the season. pic.twitter.com/f1w81xj2tf
– Manchester City (@Mancity) February 18, 2025
City was eliminated from the Champions League last season by Real Madrid and shot 33 shots in a 1-1 home stretch with Los Blancos in the second stage before he lost punishment.
Bernardo Silva was one of the two city players who were refused in that shoot-out by Andriy Lunin and saw his tame Panenka attempt caught by the stand-in goalkeeper of Madrid.
But he would not shrink if he was asked to take another spot kick and say: “Absolutely, I would set up my hand.
“You can only miss a penalty if you take it. The keeper waited for it in the middle. I have no regrets.
“If it has to go to punishment, we will do our best and qualify. We know that people we speak in the early 50-50 and maybe Madrid are favorites.
“We have a lot more difficult to do, but we believe that we can make things difficult. They have a lot of weapons to hurt us.
“A team is never perfect; Madrid, city, there is no perfect team. There is always a way to find weaknesses. There are things that they don't do so well.
“It's the way it is to find the game to bring the game to a place that we feel more comfortable with. You will always suffer, we will try to suffer as little as possible.”
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