The Aston Villa star comes up against Brendan Rodgers’s Leicester City tonight.
Brendan Rodgers has been a big fan of Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish for quite some time, it seems.
Leicester City take on the Villans in a semi-final of the League Cup tonight and Rodgers is well aware of the threat that Grealish poses.
The Northern Irishman was in charge of Liverpool in 2015 when the 24-year-old inspired Aston Villa to a shock FA Cup semi-final win over the Reds at Wembley.
Rodgers came out of that game hugely impressed by the then-youngster, who has improved and matured on and off the pitch in a big way since.
Grealish often made headlines for the wrong reasons immediately after breaking into Aston Villa’s senior side.
But captaining the club to Premier League promotion last season suggests that he thrives on the enhanced responsibility these days.
Rodgers said via The Surrey Comet: “I came away that day thinking, ‘what a player that boy is’. You are playing at Wembley with about 90,000 and he really stood out.
“To be fair to Jack, you have seen the maturity in him and it was difficult when he broke through because he was playing for his hometown club, the club he loves, so there was real emotion around it. He has matured a lot since the time he was a talent and looks like he has fully developed physically and is a wonderful player.”
The good news, if you follow Leicester, is that Rodgers is a brilliant tactician, so he’ll have worked out a plan to combat the English midfielder tonight.
Whether the Aston Villa product finds ways in which to negate it, however, is another thing.
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