Jack Grealish is an Everton player.
Not forever – not yet – but for the 2025/26 season the 29-year-old will call the blue half of Merseyside – or more accurately, the shiny new stadium on the Bramley-Moore Dock – home.
His season-long loan from Manchester City comes with a £50 million option to buy, a clause that gives Everton the chance to make the move permanent if this gamble pays off.
For a club moving into a new era – literally, with a new ground – and for a player in danger of watching the peak years of his career fade away in a club tracksuit on a padded bench seat at the Etihad, it’s a deal that could reshape both trajectories.
It’s worth remembering how big a deal Grealish once was. When City paid £100 million to prise him away from Aston Villa in August 2021, it was the largest transfer fee in British football history.
He was Villa’s captain, talisman and creative heartbeat – the player through whom everything flowed.
The first year in Manchester was an adjustment period. Grealish made 26 Premier League appearances, scoring three goals and adding three assists in 2021/22.
For most players that’s a decent output; for a £100m signing, the critics sharpened their pencils.
Then came 2022/23. This was the season Pep Guardiola’s patience looked vindicated. Grealish featured in 28 league games, scored five goals and registered seven assists.
In Europe, he was crucial in City’s march to the Champions League, his retention of the ball under pressure drawing Guardiola’s praise: “He is exceptional at keeping the ball in difficult moments,” the manager gushed. City won the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League, and Grealish was widely seen as one of the key cogs in that historic Treble.
If that campaign was the summit, the descent since has been precipitous.
In 2023/24, Grealish managed 20 league appearances, starting just 10 times, and scored three Premier League goals. Across all competitions he played 36 times, but his influence dwindled as younger, quicker wingers emerged.
By 2024/25, the writing was on the wall.
Injuries, competition from Jeremy Doku, Savinho and Omar Marmoush alongside Guardiola’s shifting tactical preferences reduced him to a fringe figure.
He played 20 league games, but started only seven, contributing one goal and one assist. Across all competitions, he totalled just three goals in 32 appearances.
The drop-off at club level has inevitably bled into his international career. Grealish has 39 senior England caps, but his last appearance for the Three Lions came in October 2024.
He was omitted entirely from Gareth Southgate’s Euro 2024 squad and with Thomas Tuchel now in charge, competition for creative roles is fierce. If Grealish wants to play in the 2026 World Cup, this season is a final audition.
For Everton, this is a roll of the dice that could come up spectacularly in their favour.
Under David Moyes, Grealish will almost certainly be given more creative licence than he has known since his Villa days. The Scotsman is pragmatic, yes, but he has always built around his most gifted player when given one.
Everton’s move into their new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium this season adds an extra layer of symbolism. They want a marquee player to front the club’s new era. Grealish, with his marketability and Premier League pedigree, fits the bill.
For the player, it’s a rare chance to be the main man again – something that rarely happens for wingers at Manchester City unless they produce to the levels of a prime-era Raheem Sterling or Riyad Mahrez.
The upside is obvious.
If Grealish rediscovers his drive and form, Everton get a leader, a game-changer, and perhaps even a route into the top half. He gets his career back on track, and maybe – just maybe – a call from Tuchel.
The downside? Brutal.
If Grealish’s Everton spell mirrors his last two seasons at City – low minutes, low output, the odd showy dribble drowned out by weeks of anonymity – then the Toffees will simply hand him back next summer.
That would leave him a 30-year-old winger unwanted at his parent club, with few elite suitors willing to take a risk on him. The England chapter would be closed, the big-club stage likely gone for good.
In football, some seasons define a career. For Grealish, 2025/26 is one of them.
The £100 million tag no longer matters. The Treble medal no longer guarantees a place in Guardiola’s plans. What matters is whether he can once again be the player who terrified full-backs, dictated tempo and drew gasps from the stands.
Everton are offering him the ball, the stage and the trust. Now it’s up to him.
If he grasps this chance, he can still be remembered as more than just a record-fee curiosity who burned brightly for one year.
If he doesn’t, then this loan might be the footballing equivalent of a farewell tour no one admits is a farewell until it’s over.
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