Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Jack Grealish, Manchester City, Pep Guardiola
Josh Lawless
Jack Grealish has been tipped to make a surprise transfer to "build his brand" as he prepares for crunch Manchester City talks.
A then-British record £100 million signing from Aston Villa in 2022, Grealish played a key role in the club's treble-win a year later but his progress has stunted massively this season.
Struggling to get in the England squad, Grealish has made just seven Premier League starts this season and has been heavily linked with a move away from the Etihad Stadium.
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He was an unused substitute in the FA Cup final defeat to Crystal Palace at Wembley, failing to be called upon despite starting the semi-final win over Nottingham Forest.
Grealish still has two years remaining on his reported £300,000-per-week contract at City but former Manchester United striker Dwight Yorke has a suggestion for where the 29-year-old should move on for his next chapter.
With high-level endorsement deals with Gucci, Bose and Pepsi under his belt, Yorke believes the MLS could be the perfect move.
"If I was Jack you'd look to move on because ultimately you want to play football, he can't just sit there because he’s not getting any younger, he is close to 30 and things won’t get any easier," he told Samba Slots,
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"He is a good footballer but never been that fast and will lose a yard of pace, he needs game time to get back up to speed and maybe that can be somewhere else in the Premier League. Maybe he will think about how he won everything in the game and think about going to Saudi or to the MLS, to close his account for his career. In the MLS he could build his brand, but he’ll have to ask himself what else he wants to do in his career.
"Pep Guardiola has obviously made up his mind and maybe he has decided that he'd run his contract out so that he's able to then leave on a free. Or maybe he just fancied himself getting back into the team and that hasn't quite materialised."
In February, Pep Guardiola apologised to Grealish for giving him the minutes "he deserves" after he was asked about where the No.10 is in his current thinking.
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Ahead of his side's penultimate game of the season against Bournemouth, Guardiola claimed he is yet to speak with Grealish about his future and admitted he understands frustration about not playing.
In a press conference, he stated: "We didn’t talk, I didn’t talk with him. People don’t believe me, but these things belong to the agents and the club and Txiki, and in this case Hugo as well. Both will decide. What is going to happen will happen, but he has to come back to start to play minutes again.
“It’s not [only] Jack. There is not one player in my locker room, and I think all the locker rooms around the world, that is happy [when they] do not play. When the team is winning and winning they have to figure out how everything happens – but they are not happy. They are here to play and, when they don’t play, they are not satisfied. That is the normal position in all the clubs.”