Grealish should be more than an FA Cup player - he needs to make Man City exit

Jack Grealish loves an open-top bus parade and there is still a chance he will be taking a ride around Manchester later in the year.

He appears to be a part of Pep Guardiola’s FA Cup plans and Manchester City are the favourites to win the competition after this win over Plymouth Argyle.

If Grealish was to pick up an FA Cup winners medal, it would go with the one he won in 2023 and with the three Premier League winners’ medals and his Champions League winners’ medal.

Medals are what Grealish came to the Etihad for.

But whether or not there is a bus ride - and even if they won the cup, there is a good chance, considering their troubled season, City would not be parading it - Grealish must surely be considering taking a journey out of town at the end of the season.

Whatever Grealish’s fitness and form issues, he has got to be more than a cup player. He turns 30 in September and should be in his prime.

But the last time Grealish was seen in anything like his pomp was probably when he was in an England jersey.

He has certainly not looked happier than he did after scoring the opening goal against Finland in Helsinki back in October of last year.

After being left out of Gareth Southgate’s Euro 2024 campaign, Grealish appeared to be having a new lease of international life under interim boss Lee Carsley.

But when Thomas Tuchel names the first squad of his regime, there is no guarantee Grealish will be part of it .

After all, for a good while, Grealish has been a fringe player for his club. Now, normally, you could say being a fringe player for a club such as Manchester City is no indictment of someone’s talent, but this is a Manchester City team that has fallen off a cliff.

Tuchel will look at Pep Guardiola’s Premier League selections and wonder why Grealish struggles to get a game.

Missing out on the European Championships in Germany was, Grealish would later say, “the most difficult thing” he has had to deal with in his career.

And he will be so desperate not to miss the World Cup in 2026 that he will have a real dilemma this summer.

Quite simply, Grealish needs to be playing football far more regularly - and when he does play, perhaps he needs to be freed from the shackles of his role on the left flank.

He might have had a couple of shots blocked in the early stages of this contest but a lot of his work was dispiritingly familiar. The check inside and the lateral or backwards pass.

On the odd occasion, he went past his man and caused a bit of defensive consternation but if Guardiola wants someone to do that in Premier League games, he has Jeremy Doku.

Somehow, Grealish needs Guardiola to find a way to allow the England man to better use his creativity.

But Guardiola is showing no signs of doing that. Having said that, Guardiola can move in mysterious ways nowadays, For example, who was the false nine here? Was it Phil Foden? Was it James McAtee?

Whoever it was, the system did not work and City were probably just a little fortunate to go in level at half-time, Nico O’Reilly’s header cancelling out a headed opener from Maksym Talovyerov.

It was an opener that was a reward for Plymouth’s doggedness and organisation. It was also a reflection of the defensive malaise that has struck City so spectacularly this season.

But the Plymouth defence also had its vulnerability from set-pieces and O’Reilly settled nerves with another header late in the second half before Kevin de Bruyne made sure of matters on the stroke of full-time.

It means City can still win silverware this season but even that might not be enough to convince Grealish not to look for pastures new.