POLL: Should we take Grealish?

Okay, so it’s just a quick one, basically so we can move on from the last post, where the subject has become a little out of date.

I said in the previous batch of comments that I’d take Grealish at £30-40 million, but he’d have to be willing to cut his wages to suit our wage structure. Although in fairness, you might expect that we’ll have to step the wages up to what would be commensurate for a Champion’s league club with aspirations of staying there. Still, it won’t be anything like the £250-300k a week he is supposed to be getting at Citeh.

It turns out that the rumours are that Greasy is going to Bayern anyway, so this probably won’t happen, but it’s a nice thought, because there’s no doubt that he’s a Villa fan, as much as many fans felt he’d let the club down. My stance is that quite simply, I don’t blame him for going for the money. He has his future to think about, after all. But now he’s ensured he’s banked millions, he could afford to look at more than the wages side of things, although I’m not sure I’d like to see my wages reduced, even at my lowly level unless there were big plusses to balance things.

Whatever, why would I take him?
Well, I believe he would give us options.
Many of you probably know I think fullbacks will always favour defence or attack. It’s exceptional to see someone who’s good at both, although Kyle Walker springs to mind, yet it’s his pace that helps him out.
I get where the doubters come from when they say that Pep has knocked the spontaneity out of his game. But I think that’s actually a plus, because now Jack can play to a plan, which we all know Unai very much believes in.
My thinking is that whereas we currently have Digne or Moreno marauding down to left to often good effect and producing dangerous crosses, so both in my opinion are poor defensively and it’s worse when they’re caught out of position.
Hence we could play Grealish on the left, in a forward position, which would allow us to bring in a better defensive left back who doesn’t get forward as much.
I think we’ve already got that sort of thing on the right, where we have Cash (albeit not quite good enough imo) linking up with Bailey or Diaby.
Taking Grealish would allow a similar thing and make us more balanced.
Plus then, we could get Grealish moving in from the left or just simply playing in the hole.
Options, as I said.
I won’t even mention his ability to win a free kick.

I know he has a checkered history outside the game, but I’d suggest that the press chasing him would reduce because of his lower profile and he’s likely to just grow out of his clubbing etc quite naturally anyway.

So there you go, those are my thoughts.
Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.