With Manchester City currently navigating their way through a packed fixture schedule, the return of Jack Grealish could not have come at a better time.
City are now three games through a run of seven games in the space of 22 days, a itinerary unusual for this stage of the season produced by the condensed Champions League schedule (the winter World Cup can take credit for that).
The run started well enough; Pep Guardiola's side pulled off a sensational 4-2 comeback win against Crystal Palace at the Etihad Stadium before steamrolling Nottingham Forest 6-0. However, 90 minutes against Aston Villa on Saturday earned them just a point, a result that saw City miss the chance to move top of the table.
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It is still early days of course, but City's inability to utterly control games like they so often did last season will have caused Guardiola some concern. Erling Haaland has made the Premier League champions look more dangerous in attack than ever before - even if he and his teammates missed a host of chances at Villa - but that offensive dynamism and directness has, at times, limited their ability to keep the ball and squeeze the life out of opponents.
That was certainly the case against Newcastle a couple of weeks ago, as it was in the first half against Crystal Palace and the second against Villa. In the latter City could and should have scored more and put the game to bed, but they didn't and their relative sloppiness on the ball offered Villa a way back in.
City's underperformance in that regard is what makes Grealish's return from injury so important. The 26-year-old has not featured since the 4-0 defeat of Bournemouth last month, but he was on the bench at Villa Park on Saturday.
Among most critics and, to be truthful, many City fans, Grealish has failed to live up to his sparkling reputation since joining City for £100m last summer. He does not play like the free spirit he was at boyhood club Villa, the improvising artist given complete creative freedom to create his masterpiece.
At City, Guardiola has asked him to play a different role, one that could help solve City's current issues.
After the breathless, end-to-end 3-3 draw at Newcastle two weeks ago, Guardiola explained that City's inability to keep hold of the ball in the final third meant that they were unprepared when the hosts hit them on the break.
"We should spend more time in the final third, give more passes in that moment, but it's difficult because Erling [Haaland] is going, Phil [Foden] has his aggression to go," he said. "If Jack [Grealish] plays there or Riyad [Mahrez], they are more calm and they help us to be all together, and when we lost the ball, we are there and they [the opponents] cannot run."
Although the draw at Villa came about in different circumstances - Guardiola credited a failure to deal with long balls rather than counter-attacks as City's undoing - it was clear he felt that Grealish's ability to 'put his foot on the ball' would have helped.
Asked whether he considered introducing Grealish from the bench at Villa Park the manager said: "We thought about it at one-zero but he trained just two days.
"If we had scored two, for sure we would have had him in. Jack started the season really well and we need players so it’s good to have him back."
That Guardiola considered bringing on a short-of-match-fitness Grealish, in-front of a home crowd that would surely have given him a rather hostile reception, shows just how central he is to City's game management strategy.
Should City hold a narrow lead in Seville on Tuesday, then don't be surprised to see Grealish enter the fray. Against Spurs and Borussia Dortmund, two sides well equipped to punish City on the counter-attack, he might even start. Keeping the ball is how City defend from the front, and nobody in Guardiola's squad is better at it than Grealish.
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