After his stint on the Manchester City naughty step, we might have expected a fired-up and fighting Jack Grealish at Brentford.
What we got was 45 minutes of anonymity as a false nine, and then a slight improvement after he was shifted from that central role to his more familiar left side in a switch with his partner in crime Phil Foden.
Those two were dropped by Pep Guardiola, who refrained from publicly berating them while making it plain that he was unhappy with their off-field behaviour, when they were pictured on a night out after the Leeds game - and were worse for wear when they turned up at the training ground the following day.
They were both benched for the next two games, and watched on as the Blues made it plain they can thrive without them by sticking four past Newcastle and six past Leicester.
Signs that Guardiola was softening his approach a little - at least in Foden’s case - came as he gave the platinum-blond England star 20 minutes against the Foxes.
And both were back in the starting XI at Brentford, to mixed effect.
Foden got on the end of a sumptuous De Bruyne pass after abandoning his left-wing post to make a dart to the right side of the goal.
Maybe it is harsh to judge Grealish’s reaction, as he played in a team that looked fitful, lethargic and prepared to do just enough to harvest the three points, and no more.
But this was a crucial game for Grealish, as it was for Foden.
The younger man, while hardly in vintage form, rose to it by coming up with a quality winning goal, while Grealish failed to impress.
The honeymoon period that inevitably comes with a £100million price tag, even with a manager who respects reputations and transfer fees as little as Guardiola, is now over.
Grealish had done well enough in his first four months in sky blue, largely because he has created space and time for others, rather than being the creative, goalscoring kingpin he was at Aston Villa.
But with Raheem Sterling springing back into form with eight goals and some murderous approach work in his last ten games, Grealish is up against it in terms of nailing down a regular place.
The last thing he needed was to provoke the wrath of the manager by failing to keep his discipline off the field.
It has to be said that Grealish is not in Guardiola’s strongest XI, and in terms of the left-wing slot he is behind both of his England colleagues in the pecking order - and that will not have escaped the notice of Gareth Southgate, either.
Grealish has played the false nine before - he was ineffective at Anfield, missed a hatful of chances against Wolves and was a non-entity in west London last night.
Guardiola switched him back to the left, and he perked up - whether that was because he just feels more comfortable there, or because he simply does not fancy being stuck with a role that is more sacrificial than most in this City set-up, only he knows.
But if Guardiola picks on form and his usual rotation, Grealish will be out of the team again when the Blues head for Arsenal - he has some serious thinking about what he wants from his City and England careers, because he is running the risk of messing up both.
