Jack Grealish might be Man City's fan-favourite - but Savinho's arrival and poor start to pre-season leaves £100m man facing an uphill battle to earn Pep Guardiola's trust

Grealish has had a short but hugely eventful career with City. He arrived at the club in the summer of 2021 as the most expensive Premier League of all time, costing £100m ($128m), though Enzo Fernandez has since usurped him, while Jude Bellingham has unseated him as the most expensive British player. That price tag, however, weighed heavily in his first season with City and he made just 31 starts in all competitions, notching six goals and four assists.

He found his feet in his second campaign, growing in stature after the World Cup and playing a huge part in City’s treble win. He ended the campaign with five goals and 11 assists, but anyone paying close attention could tell you he was instrumental to City’s achievements.

His ability to carry the ball forward, hold it up and draw fouls was crucial to the functioning of the team. He later confessed to crying as he watched the last episode of the Netflix series 'Together', chronicling the season.

The following campaign, however, he went back to where he started. In fact, it was Grealish's worst campaign of all. He made just 24 starts, with only 10 coming in the Premier League. He ended the campaign with three goals and three assists, and in the crunch games Guardiola barely used him.

He started one of City’s final seven Premier League matches, playing no part in the last three. And in the FA Cup final against Manchester United, he was an unused substitute. His sparse participation and the excellent form of the likes of Eberechi Eze, Jarrod Bowen, Anthony Gordon and Cole Palmer led to him being excluded from the England squad for Euro 2024.

There were several reasons for Grealish’s dip in form. He suffered a dead leg in only the third game of the season against Sheffield United, an injury which he later claimed was the worst of his career.

There was also the harrowing break-in at his family home while he was playing at Everton, an incident he claims still haunts him. He then suffered a number of muscle injuries, one of which reduced him to tears. To make matters worse, Guardiola seemed to suggest that the injuries were down to a lack of peak fitness and warned him that City would not wait for him to rediscover his old self.

The competitive nature of City’s squad was underlined by the signing of Jeremy Doku last summer, despite Grealish’s wonderful displays. Doku usurped Grealish as Guardiola’s first-choice left-winger, although in some games he used neither of them, turning to Mateo Kovacic as an extra holding midfielder instead and deploying Phil Foden on the left but with a licence to drift inside.

The competition is about to get even fiercer, as Savinho has just signed up after an outstanding season on loan at Girona from Troyes. The 20-year-old thrived as a left-winger in La Liga and is a potential second barrier between Grealish and a regular starting berth.

Then there is Oscar Bobb, who has been the star of City’s pre-season tour and should be in line for a much bigger role when the campaign begins. The Norwegian has certainly outperformed Grealish in the U.S., as the ex-Aston Villa star gave competent if unremarkable displays in the defeats by Celtic and AC Milan. Against Milan he created no chances and only took one touch in the opposition area.

Bobb has played more off the right wing, but he presents a fresh problem for Grealish. If the Englishman is a tactically superior player to Doku but a technically inferior one, Bobb is currently outshining him in both aspects. The Norwegian youngster has the intelligence to know when to slow the play down, but also the daringness to take multiple players on and beat them.

Grealish, then has a lot of work to do. The good news is that he knows that is the case and is doing all he can to put things right. According to the Daily Mail, he arranged a personal meeting with Guardiola the week before the FA Cup final to find out what he needed to do to get back into the team.

The Catalan, who had given his assurances in a press conference at the end of last season that "Jack will be back", urged him to rekindle his desire for the next campaign. Grealish responded by cutting short his summer holidays and arranging private fitness sessions in Portugal with personal trainer Jack Reynolds.

He also resisted partying with friends, unlike last year when he became the face of City’s treble celebrations and continued the revelry long into the summer. On the day that England were playing Slovenia at Euro 2024, Grealish was at City’s training ground working on his physique.

Grealish has confessed to feeling anxious about how to top the high of winning the treble, and he suffered a hangover from that season in more ways than one. He told the Daily Mail last April: “At times this season I have struggled a little bit with myself. Sometimes you do sit there and think how can you ever top last year? Will any happiness ever come close to that?”

He is not the only City player who could not replicate his performances in the treble season, with John Stones also struggling with injuries for much of the last campaign, while Kevin De Bruyne missed the first half of the season after tearing his hamstring. Haaland also had a drop off by his ridiculously high standards.

But Grealish’s struggles got more attention. That is partly down to the £100m fee City paid three years ago and partly due to his celebrity status. That same charisma that drew women in New York to tears means he will be criticised more than his peers.

Now he is in the opposite position as last year. The party is over and he has a point to prove.

Grealish heads into City’s next friendly against Barcelona on Tuesday as a marked man, needing to show that he is ready to fight for his place again after the disappointment of last year. After all, Guardiola has warned him that City won’t wait for him.

The signings of Savinho and the emergence of Bobb prove that the bar at City never remains the same, it only gets higher. Grealish must rise to meet it, or seriously consider his future. It’s time to remind everyone of his footballing ability, as well as his likeability.