The kindest reading of Jack Grealish's career is that a run of rotten luck with his body took a once-elite winger and left him stranded. Forget the kind reading. This week Everton told you the truth in their own words: he was "unavailable for selection due to a breach of Club discipline."
That is not a line a club reaches for lightly. Everton didn't rest him or rotate him. They announced, in public, before a League Cup fourth-round tie against Newcastle, that one of their highest-profile players had broken the rules badly enough to be thrown out of the squad. Grealish had missed the 2-0 defeat at Arsenal with illness, then failed to turn up for training when every player was expected at Finch Farm. Put those two things side by side and you don't need a leaked dossier to work out why David Moyes was furious.
Moyes, asked about it, refused to dress it up. "It was a club decision. I support the decision. It's something I don't really want to speak too much about," he said, before going out of his way to praise Everton's "really good values." A manager praising his club's values while a specific player sits at home is telling you exactly who failed the test.
He's done this before, and there's no ambiguity about it. He's been dogged by off-pitch criticism for years, with nightclub incidents and reports of after-hours drinking that saw him slide from the heart of Manchester City's team to the edge of it. City don't sideline a £100 million player, a British record fee when they bought him from Aston Villa in 2021, for no reason. He won three Premier League titles, the Champions League and the FA Cup there, and his form fell off a cliff after the 2022-23 treble. Then he was loaned out. His first Everton loan ended early with a foot injury after 20 league games, two goals and six assists. Now he's back on a second season-long loan, a winger Everton only needed because Iliman Ndiaye left for City, and he's already been dropped for discipline. You do not fall that far, from that much talent, by accident.
The English press has a long, ugly habit of turning Black and working-class footballers' private lives into a circus. Marcus Rashford took a two-week fine from Manchester United after a reported 12-hour Belfast bender and a sick-day no-show. Raheem Sterling spent years being hammered over a tattoo and his spending, most of it nonsense. The pile-on is not always earned. But this is Grealish's own club, on the record, saying he broke discipline rules, after a no-show at training, in a season where he has no margin left to burn.
The blame lands on Grealish. His upbringing, the press, and bad luck don't explain this. Everton drew a hard line and then advanced to the quarter-finals without him, a clear sign of how replaceable he currently is. Moyes refused to soften it. Good. For a decade now, "that's just Jack" has worked as a free pass, the charming Brummie who parties hard and still turns it on. The free pass has expired, and at some point his talent won't be enough to keep clubs patient.
