Grealish 'outlawed' after 'bizarre decision' from scared Man City but Everton can save the 'robot'

Jack Grealish is looking for a way out of Man City having fallen out of favour.

Manchester City paid a record fee for Jack Grealish before squashing his individuality due to fear. Everton can take advantage and harness the maverick.

I’m at the Edinburgh Fringe from Sunday for a few days.

We’ve been going since 2004 and have seen many hundreds of shows. I was the first reviewer to give Sarah Millican and John Bishop five stars and predict a big career in the mainstream of comedy. Ten years ago I was on the Awards panel (used to be the Perrier) and saw 123 shows in three weeks.

Believe me, your laugh muscle wears out.

By the end it took a woman ‘vomiting’ as she impersonated a social club entertainment secretary to make me laugh. Then she hit herself in the face and ‘broke’ her nose. Excellent. This is what we’re here for.

Twenty years ago it was still possible, indeed commonplace, to see radical acts doing things you’d never imagine. Lesbians naked in a church wrapped in cling film doing things with margarine and compost? Step this way. These days, not so much.

There are still hundreds of great shows, certainly, and we’ll see some of them but a common criticism, certainly in comedy, is that the rough edges have often been polished away by people studying the artform and even getting qualifications in comedy. 7/10s are plentiful and you’ll enjoy their show but that howling with uncontrolled laughter at someone life-changingly original happens infrequently.

This is a kind of corporatisation of comedy. Good but missing something profound. And the parallels with football are irresistible because the same thing has happened. I watch up to a dozen games some weeks and that which is sold to us as a kind of jaw-dropping elite is usually nothing of the sort. It’s not the truth; it’s just marketing. Like in comedy, most games are 7/10 and entertaining but they lack that febrile, chaotic edge that makes the best things compelling.

Without even touching on the ridiculous and frequently immoral economics which have played their part in this creep towards standardisation and just watching games without engaging your moral compass, it’s not difficult to see. Many sides play the same way. Many players play a similar game and the mavericks of yore have been consigned to the dustbin. No-one wants 10/10 players if they come with a few 4/10s. Predictability is being passed off as consistency.

We have an example of this in Jack Grealish. Possibly the biggest, most maverick talent of this generation, he was signed for a record fee and three years later he’s in the skip. He was signed as a great talent and then told to suppress that great talent as it wasn’t needed. Individuality was outlawed. Get-off-your-seat moments were denied.

Time was, every side had a tricky player who was often tasked with unlocking defences. They were highly prized – if not so much by England. Everyone wanted to be Eddie Gray, Tony Currie, Peter Beardsley, Matt Le Tissier or even Lee Trundle. These players would be on the bench now if they played for a top side. No, no, no…we play it safe. We don’t call it that. We call it consistency, or sticking to a shape, but we can’t have you doing whatever you want just because fans want to see it.

The fact that thousands of people paid money to see Grealish be Grealish no longer matters. They’re just mugs to be milked.

One thing I hope becomes fashionable this season is playing long-ball football and being unafraid of the tactic police to call it that. People have grown weary of possession football – too often it’s boring and it’s proven to not be the successful approach it was long assumed to be. Indeed England won the Euros against Spain with less of the ball. But with crowds cheering when a keeper kicks it long instead of playing it out, it’s clear that football clubs have developed ways of playing (often purely out of fear of the manager being called a dinosaur) that are not popular and fans are sick of it.

Booting it long to the likes of Grealish to do his thing is what we all would like to see regularly. You charge us enough, don’t our wishes matter? I don’t expect Wimbledon 1988-style, that would probably lead to arrests, but something in that spirit would be thrilling and, at least initially, successful, because defenders wouldn’t be used to it.

I’m sure the players themselves would welcome such a change. It’s puzzling that it’s ended up like this. Millions of pounds are paid for players and their individuality is squashed. It makes no sense until you realise that fear of failure inhibits the game in the higher echelons. Fear of being thought unfashionable, fear of not maximising money, fear of the unknown.

Once you realise that, it explains the bizarre decision to not let your £100million transfer be who he wants to be. Hopefully whoever signs Grealish understands that they’re not getting a robot to fit into a system but a creative, unpredictable force.

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