Everton hero Grealish proves why Man City transfer failed

Jack Grealish was never a good fit for Manchester City.

This is a player who feeds off being the most important player in a side, the man all his teammates look to first whenever they go on the attack. He is the big central cog who spins at his own rate and expects others to slot around him; in City’s hyper-organised structure, that usually left Grealish spinning sadly and uselessly all on his own.

Everton is exactly the move he needed, and Grealish is exactly the player Everton needed. For all Iliman Ndiaye, Beto and others stepped up after David Moyes’ return last season, they were still crying out for a big individual talent who could be given license to just be himself.

With Grealish only appearing from the bench at Elland Road last week, Everton well and truly went through the motions in their defeat to Leeds. With their first home game at their big shiny new ground coming up, Everton looked like they were treating it like we imagine one would treat one of those weird wedding rehearsal dinners you see on American sitcoms. (What even is the point of them, anyway? We’ve never gone to a wedding, even our own, and thought ‘absolute shambles, if only they had practiced this first’. They’re not that hard.)

But at last, this was their big day. Moyes was the proud father of the bride, leading her out in her iconic blue dress, as one of England’s oldest clubs embarked on life in their new home.

It was their something borrowed that got things rolling, though. Grealish earned a huge roar of appreciation inside a couple of minutes after embarking on a trademark run, getting trapped in the corner, then twice winning challenges to keep Everton on the front foot.

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That attack went nowhere, and their eagerness to get off the mark at the Hill Dickinson Stadium (which will forever be the Dixon Hill Stadium in our heads) counted again them in the early stages of the game. Everything attack was a bit too rushed, a bit too forced.

But Moyes would much rather have seen that than a repeat of their listless display at Elland Road, and they were forced to gather their composure after James Tarkowski let a long ball go over his head, allowing Kaoru Mitoma to get into the box, unexpectedly flick the ball up in the air to take two defenders out of the game, and smash a volley against the crossbar.

The next Everton attack was for more effective. Grealish was released into space on the left, ran at his man in trademark terrifying style, and absolutely smashed a cross to the back post to find Ndiaye’s perfectly-timed run. The last men’s goalscorer at Goodison Park thus became the first to score a competitive goal at the new gaff.

Brighton, for their part, were the most incompetent wedding crashers of all time. That Mitoma crack against the bar was followed by Danny Welbeck literally falling over himself to put a sitter over the bar, Jan Paul van Hecke’s deflected long-ranger hitting the woodwork and, most criminal of all, failing to score after Tarkowski’s awful backpass put Matt O’Riley one-on-one with Jordan Pickford with two teammates in support.

Welbeck later had a penalty saved by Pickford, and it all would have felt like divine providence that nothing was going to spoil Everton’s day if it weren’t the most Brighton thing we have ever seen. Has there ever been a Premier League side so capable of producing such wonderful stylish football yet also hilariously capable of letting big moments go to ruin?

You have to wonder at this stage whether Brighton feel that is just bad luck (they almost perfectly matched their xG last season, after all) or whether they should, in fact, be doing more.

Missing big chances can happen to the best of sides, but the issue is that they are the epitome of a ‘you score two, we’ll score three’ side. You do, in fact, need to score those three to avoid defeat. Just to confirm that point, Everton were punishingly efficient with their two goals.

Having got to the break with their lead still somehow intact, it took just six minutes for them to double it, with Grealish’s presence on the corner of the Brighton box terrifying them into dropping back in and letting James Garner go completely free just outside the box. Grealish spotted him and laid it off for an accurate drive into the bottom corner.

The pass was simple, but what it said about the effect Grealish’s presence can have on the opposition when he is given this kind of starring role was loud and clear. He would have had a hat-trick of assists had Dwight McNeil not badly miscued from his late cutback.

Moyes subbed Grealish off in injury time, and the smile on his face was matched around three-quarters of the new dockside stadium. To be at his best, Grealish just needs to be loved; here, he will get all the adoration he needs.