Man City should have sold ‘one of their best’ players

It’s always nice to see a player bounce back from adversity. Ahead of England’s comfortable 3-0 win over Wales on Thursday night, Manchester City’s John Stones said he considered retiring last season due to endless injury problems.

But Stones, 30, has already started five matches in all competitions for the Citizens this season, and he was victorious at Wembley, despite being in pain but surviving a fitness scare.

Stones is not the only member of a City persuasion aiming for a renaissance at the more mature end of his career, however, with Jack Grealish starting to look like a £100m player again.

Only he does it on Merseyside, in an Everton shirt.

Why Man City loaned Jack Grealish

Pep Guardiola broke the bank by signing Grealish from Aston Villa for a British record fee of £100million. It was 2021. The Three Lions star was silky and stylish and all the rest, but he got lost somewhere in the mechanics of Man City during his four years at the Etihad.

Yet the 30-year-old is a citizen, on loan to Everton this summer. But Grealish returned to his best form so far this season, bagging four assists in August to win the Premier League Player of the Month award and scoring the recent winner at the Hill Dickinson Stadium to end Crystal Palace’s 19-match unbeaten run.

Grealish, perhaps, is at his best when he is the figurehead of a team, the talisman. Under Pep’s wing, something went wrong and he worked on the sidelines during his last two Premier League campaigns.

If the Sky Blues manage to sell the £300,000-a-week talent permanently next summer, they will recoup none of that figure once paid.

In 157 outings for Man City, Grealish has scored 17 times and provided 23 assists for his teammates.

He was never a prolific player in his own right, but there was no doubt that much was left to be desired, and Guardiola knew it, setting his record by making just 17 Premier League starts over his final two tenures. During this period, he scored six goals.

Grealish isn’t the only one to have been carted off this summer, however, Pep and co may be considering the opportunity to sell Bernardo Silva for a big fee with something akin to regret.

Pep should have sold Bernardo Silva

Silva, 31, is one of the definitive superstars of the Guardiola era at Manchester City. A six-time Premier League champion, his 419 appearances for the club place him ninth in the all-time rankings.

But he’s starting to sink. Even though the manager named him captain this summer, Silva has lost some of the magic that has so often been noticeable throughout his career, and Fabrizio Romano said only this week that the veteran “has a chance of leaving Man City” before 2026.

It has been a long and storied career for Silva at Manchester City, but Guardiola’s team is evolving and rumors of the Iberian talent’s potential departure have generally emerged in recent years.

Last season was difficult for everyone at the club, but Silva felt the upheaval and tumult more than anyone. His production was cut in half and he was placed on the substitutes’ bench seven times during the second half of the elite season.

Changed in his role, Silva is no longer producing goals and assists with the same regularity, and the Sofascore record sees him averaging just one chance per Premier League game this season, losing 70% of his duels so far.

He has captained Man City six times in all competitions this season and remains one of the most agile and intelligent players in the Premier League, even described as “one of the best players” Guardiola has ever seen.

But, at 31, there is a sense that he is in the autumn of his career in English football and is no longer indispensable as he once was.

He’s still a tenacious and complex attacking midfielder, ranking in the top 1% of peers in Europe for passing, top 10% for tackling and top 7% for runs per 90, but the Portugal international could have fetched a pretty penny for City in the past, with Transfermarkt recording the ace once having a market value of €100 million (£86 million).

Silva is in the top 54% of goals and assists combined, which isn’t enough for a City team looking for different attacking dimensions, easing the burden on Erling Haaland.

Saudi suitors showed up last year and prepared their offers. It came to nothing, but since the Portuguese star has hinted that this coming season could be his last as he eyes the culmination of his Manchester contract, could there be a touch of sadness that a big sale could not have been arranged, and instead City must say goodbye to one of their best for free?

News is indeed multiplying on the possibility of Silva leaving for free this summer, with Benfica and AC Milan considered among the favorites. This is a reality that Man City must accept. Maybe they should have sold him last season, or the year before, but after signing him in 2017 for £43.5 million, some would say City got their money’s worth.

Regarding the regret of not selling sooner to speed up the rebuild, the same logic could be attributed to Grealish, who languished at Man City for two years before moving to Everton and resurrecting his career. Had City conceded either before diving and declining, a significant figure could have been achieved.