MANCHESTER CITY had looked to be taking their Treble-winning success in their stride but all of a sudden have started limping — just like their £100million man Jack Grealish.
After six straight Premier League wins to kick off the campaign, Pep Guardiola’s men have now lost their last two, prompting fears of a backward step after the stratospheric highs of last season.
Grealish played just ten minutes of those back-to-back losses to Wolves and Arsenal, coming on as a late substitute at Molineux, as he battles back to full fitness following a dead leg sustained at Sheffield United in August.
Normally that type of injury would not cause too much bother and certainly not for one of the most fouled players who has suffered more than his fair share of them over the years.
But this one was so bad — the worst City’s club doctor Max Sala had ever seen, according to Grealish — that the England star could hardly walk.
Speaking ahead of Friday’s friendly with Australia, the 28-year-old gave a fascinating insight into how the problem has blighted his campaign.
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Grealish revealed: “Apart from the kidney injury I had six years ago, it was the most painful injury I have had.
“You might all laugh at me now, it was only a dead leg, but it was the worst dead leg I have had in my life.
“I get so many of them over the years and I am usually good at taking them, taking the hits and stuff.
“If you get a dead leg and you have a haematoma (where trauma damages veins or arteries) the blood, if you have a bad one, it’s like 6cm. Mine was 20cm!
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“Our doc at City, who has worked at AC Milan and everything, said, ‘That’s the worst dead leg I’ve ever seen, by a mile’.
“And it wasn’t even bad, the tackle. It was Ollie McBurnie against Sheff U. If I showed you the tackle now, you’d be like ‘Get up’. It doesn’t even look that bad.
“After the game it was sore. But when I was on the coach, I was like, ‘Nah, I need something here, doc’.
“And then I went to walk off the coach back into the training ground at City and I genuinely could not walk, honestly. I had to get crutches and stuff. It was the worst pain ever.”
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Former Aston Villa star Grealish was on crutches for the next few days but then struggled to bend his leg, meaning doing normal cardiovascular training such as on the exercise bike was a non-starter for 3½ weeks.
It explains why he still does not feel fully fit now, though he is pain free, and considers what few minutes he has played since picking up the injury to have contributed to effectively a “mini pre-season”.
The winger had never experienced consecutive league defeats at City until now and that wobble has doubters questioning whether Guardiola’s side still have the same hunger after last term’s historic triumph.
With seemingly no worlds left to conquer, Grealish — who was in the side knocked out of the League Cup by Newcastle last month — did hint that it has had a psychological impact.
He said: “I am not saying it is hard to get motivated . . . you can’t say that. But when you’ve done it, it’s kind of like, ‘What now?’
“It would have been nice to do something that we have never done. Maybe win all four — put the Carabao Cup in there as well — but we are out of the Carabao Cup already.
“Then it was maybe trying to do an Invincible season but we got beaten by Wolves, so we can’t do that either.
“It’s different. I have never been off the back of a season like the one I had.”
City are only two points off shock league leaders Tottenham, despite their recent losses, and usually start slowly.
And yet back-to-back defeats are so rare for a Guardiola team that some may consider it a crisis of sorts.
Yet when that word was put to Grealish, he hit back: “Come on! No chance.
“Obviously I’ve never lost two games in a row for City before. But it’s nowhere near a crisis.
“We had a brilliant start to the season. We didn’t win the Community Shield but then we won the Super Cup. We then won six in a row and we’ve obviously lost the last two.
“Rodri has been a big miss for us. There’s no doubt about that.
“For me, I come (to England) this week and I’ve tried to do little bits of extra fitness after training, just to try and help myself get back to full fitness.
“I feel like when I am fit, I can help any team in the world, whether that be here at England or at City.
“As soon as I go back to City, I need to get myself back in that starting XI because towards the end of last season, I was playing every single game so that’s how I want it to be.”
A run-out against the Aussies and then Italy on Tuesday would help speed up his comeback.
England will be facing the Azzurri at Wembley next week for the first time since losing Euro 2020 on penalties there.
Grealish usually remembers all his games well but says that one remains a bit of a blur to him.
And at next summer’s Euros in Germany, he — and the likes of Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and Marcus Rashford — are out to make up for that heartbreaking defeat by bringing home the trophy.
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He added: “We just have so much talent, without putting too much pressure on ourselves, this is one we are really looking at to go into and try and win the tournament.
“Imagine how amazing it would be for the country? It would be un- believable. We do feel this is our time.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
