Manchester City star Jack Grealish has reacted after his team’s win in Saturday’s game against Wolves.
After finally scoring his first of the season against Wolves, the England international acknowledged that his detractors were correct to lament his recent goal-scoring performance.
Grealish received harsh criticism after a rather subpar start to the season, which was exacerbated by a particularly lacklustre performance against Borussia Dortmund in midweek, but he scored right away on Saturday in Man City’s 3-0 victory over Wolves.
Grealish gave a refreshingly candid assessment of his recent performances in an interview with BT Sport following the game.
He said: “It was a long time coming. I haven’t scored since…well I don’t know when it was…since the West Ham game at the back end of last season so it was just nice to get off of the mark for this season and to do it so early and obviously to get the three points at a difficult place to come against a top, top team as well.
“I think they are so underrated, this Wolves team, and they’ve shown it at points in the second half so it’s a great result for us.”
Grealish responded when asked about the debates surrounding his recent performance: “I think rightly so. I should be scoring more, I should be getting more assists, but yeah, the only thing I can do is to score and get assists.
“Obviously I’m always going to have people talking about me because of the amount I got bought for, but if you look at my whole career I probably haven’t scored as much as certain people. Even when I was at Aston Villa I think I only scored 14 or 15 goals over the two seasons in the Premier League. It’s something that I do want to add to my game and playing with this team, and in front of these fans, hopefully I can.
“You know, obviously it’s nice [to have Pep Guardiola defend Grealish’s form]. He’s been brilliant with me and I probably have to thank him because he gave me the opportunity today after my performance on Wednesday which wasn’t the best at all. Hopefully I repaid him.”