The 23-year-old was sidelined after Villa’s Championship draw with West Brom but that game wasn’t when he first picked up the injury.
Aston Villa fan favourite Jack Grealish made his return to the first team last Saturday in a Championship home game against Derby County.
Prior to the Rams game, the 23-year-old had not played since December 7, the 2-2 draw with West Bromwich Albion, and the Villans won just two of 13 games without him in their ranks.
However, Grealish came back from his shin injury against Frank Lampard’s side and not only was his all-round game excellent, but he also got on the scoresheet in emphatic fashion.
With Dean Smith’s side already three goals to the good heading into first-half injury time, Glenn Whelan whipped a corner to the edge of the penalty area and it found Grealish.
What followed was a cleanly struck, ferocious right-footed volley into the far top corner of the net, sending the Villa Park crowd into a frenzy, and served as the cherry on top in a 4-0 win.
Grealish may have found himself on the sidelines after the West Brom game but, in a YouTube video on the Villa channel, he revealed he had been carrying it for a lot longer – since Smith’s first game in charge, in fact.
“Since Swansea I had it,” he said. “Obviously the manager comes in and you get an injury after his first game you don’t really want to pull out.
“You want to impress the manager and keep on playing so I carried on. I must have played about seven or eight games with it and then, in the end, the Middlesbrough game and the West Brom one, the pain got too much.”
This means that Grealish played a further eight matches, and Villa won five of them, which just goes to show how he is not only a superb player in terms of skills and talent but has the mental strength and heart of a lion too.
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