Txiki Begiristain was looking forward to being entertained. Manchester City, often dubbed big spenders, had spent more than any other English club previously had on one player. They had made Jack Grealish the £100m man. Their director of football called his costliest recruit “one of the most exciting attacking players in world football”.
Three-and-a-half years later, Grealish returns to Aston Villa on Saturday as, arguably, neither an attacking player nor an exciting one. Instead, a maverick has been reinvented as a curiosity, a Pep Guardiola project who now does far fewer of the things often associated with excitement – score goals, make them, run at defenders – than he used to. There are those at Villa Park who will recognise a local accent and see a familiar face. But the player they might see is rather different.
