Since his British record arrival in August, Jack Grealish's Manchester City performances have been under a harsh microscope.
Naysayers point to a fairly sparse return of three goals and as many assists in 23 outings across all competitions for the Premier League champions.
But one or two things must be taken into consideration when discussing Grealish’s time under Pep Guardiola to date.
It hasn’t even been a season and several members of the current squad only truly hit their stride after a year or more at the club. The likes of Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez, Joao Cancelo and Rodri are all examples of this.
At the end of the 1-1 draw against Southampton, Guardiola jumped to the defence of his most expensive signing. “The best game he has played since he has been with us, by far," he said. "This was an exceptional performance."
In Monday's Facebook Live, the City is Ours regular duo of Dom Farrell and Alex Brotherton discussed the fallout from the draw at St Mary's, including Pep's comments on Jack.
AB: “Obviously, the easy thing to do is to just look at the lack of goal contributions. It is a definite drop off in his production in terms of goals from his Villa days, but you have to look a bit closer at what he's being asked to do, how City play and the fact that he is still making chances.
“A lot of the time he's been playing as a false nine, which he'd not played at Villa, and he's also been deployed quite a lot as sort of a high and wide winger, which is also not what he did at Villa.
“It's like he's been in a bit of a supporting role rather than being the protagonist in all of City’s play, just because of those roles and how much quality we have in that sort of area of the pitch. But I think at Southampton he played pretty well.
“He's always going to keep the ball, with Grealish that's one of his great strengths - drawing fouls, especially when you want to keep possession or want to calm the game down as they probably did in the first half because Southampton were making it quite a dynamic game. Grealish is always great to give the ball to and he'll usually do something quite intelligent with it.”
DF: “In terms of him holding on to the ball in possession, I suppose, it’s not maybe what people want to see from a guy that excites like Jack Grealish traditionally. But when [Ilkay] Gundogan doesn't play, there's a little bit more onus on a forward like him to sort of cherish the ball a bit take the sting out of things.
“Pep said he played really, really well and he thought he was exceptional. I think that's something we've said about Grealish all along - he's not playing this amount of games because of the price tag.
“There are examples of it all across the City squad where, regardless of reputation or fee, if you're not doing what Guardiola wants then you won't be in the side.”
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