Aston Villa-oriented journalist Mat Kendrick has recently criticised Graeme Souness for his comments about Jack Grealish.
Kendrick was recently a guest on the latest episode of the ‘Claret and Blue’ podcast and a discussion took place about Grealish. Kendrick though, picked out what Souness recently spoke about the Englishman and he criticised the pundit for it.
Souness had recently provided a rather damning assessment of Grealish. The former player is yet to be convinced by whether Grealish can play for a top team. Souness doesn’t see Grealish’s ‘most fouled‘ player in the Premier League tag as a positive. He believes that this is an indication of how Grealish is ‘holding on to the ball’ for too long.
But when talking about Souness’ assessment of the Villa star, Kendrick said: “The other thing I just wanted to say on Souness and Grealish before I do finally let it go is – what is he saying? Is he saying that Jack Grealish can’t spot a pass? Because Jack Grealish has clearly got the best vision and is able to not just spot the pass, but deliver the weight of pass better than anybody in that Villa team and better than a lot of his contemporaries and peers in the Premier League. So just shut up, Graeme.”
Is Souness being ignorant in his assessment of Grealish?
No, he's right
Yes, he's got no clue
Kendrick isn’t pleased by what Souness said and he rates Grealish pretty high.
TIF Thoughts…
As per FBref, Grealish is the fourth-best in the whole league for the highest number of shot-creation actions per 90 minutes this season. His number stands at 5.30 – only behind Kevin De Bruyne, James Maddison and Riyad Mahrez.
The Englishman has an Expected Assists per 90 minutes metric of 0.19 this season and that is the 18th-best in the Premier League so far in the current campaign.
So clearly, he knows how to create chances and is pretty good at doing that as well. Not just that, but Grealish is also the second-best in the league for the progressive distance of ball-carries this season.
This proves that the 24-year-old is a very reliable dribbler and is a very reliable creator as well. So, Souness is wrong about many things in his judgement of Grealish and Kendrick does pick the right issues, when criticising the pundit for his comments.