Alan Shearer has heaped praise on Premier League star Jack Grealish after he was given ‘a kick up the backside’ by his manager Pep Guardiola.
Grealish played the full match as City smashed Salford 8-0 in the third round of the FA Cup on Saturday at the Etihad.
The Englishman provided two assists, one for Jeremy Doku and another for James McAtee, while he also got on the scoresheet himself to end a 392-day goal drought.
Grealish has largely struggled across the 2024-25 campaign but after what could be a season-turning performance, Shearer lauded the 29-year-old.
‘I thought Jack Grealish did everything that he could have done,’ legendary Premier League striker Shearer told the BBC.
‘He has had a tough time and Pep has called him out. Pep has put him back in the team.
‘It will have been a kick up the backside and you’ve got to go out and show a reaction and he has done that.’
Guardiola, meanwhile, quizzed about Grealish ending his goal drought, said: ‘He made a good assist as well, not just the goal.
‘He scored a goal, made an assist. Jack’s a special player, not always one to score a lot of goals but it depends on him.
‘If he can perform well, he’ll take the opportunity to keep going and going. All the players depend on the performance in training sessions and when they have minutes to play. It’s simple, not just for Jack, for all of them.
‘I’ve been manager here for more than 500 games and we’ve made an incredible 487 or 488 games. Then we had 11, 12 or 13 bad games.
‘The problem that we’ve had is that we’ve had an incredible amount of injuries so we could not train and we could not compete. It’s so difficult but step by step, people are coming back.
‘This season or maybe next season, new players come in and you have to fight for your position. When someone pushes you, you have competition and you give your best.’
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