News of Aston Villa captain Jack Grealish signing a new five year contract at Villa Park was greeted jubilantly by the club's directors, who can now expect a large compensation fee when he leaves for a better team next season.
The canny Villains board pulled off a similar coup with another captain in 2015-16, when they’d ‘tied down’ Fabian Delph to the club for - as with Grealish - five years, only to celebrate his departure for oil-rich Manchester City six months later.
"I'm not leaving", Delph declared in January 2016, EIGHT DAYS before signing up at the Etihad, a show of moral bankruptcy that suggested he was a player cast in the image of his new bosses.
The suspicion is that Aston Villa captains cannot be trusted. Grealish himself was even quicker than Delph (naturally) to be caught with his hot-pants on fire. "Stay Home. Stay Safe. Protect the NHS", he'd urged Villa fans to follow government advice during lockdown on March 28th this year, only to be discovered A DAY LATER at the scene of a car accident en route to visiting a non-essential friend.
Despite Grealish being much better than Delph, Manchester City have ruled themselves out of a near future bid for him, unwilling as they to gamble their sports-washing project on a third arch-exponent of defying Covid-19 regulations. With Kyle Walker and Phil Foden having pressed high up the pitch on various women in tight areas during the pandemic, Grealish’s own appetite for rule-flouting, in addition to his tanned, showy-haired profile, causes concern for the Abu Dhabi ruling-state presiding over City that he might one day be caught at it with a man.
A man-on-man act, illegal in AD, would force the Mansour clan’s crack legal team - famed for overturning City’s European ban on the grounds of crimes being reported too late - to work overtime in finding a woman to blame, and then ideally sending her to jail (with all the other banged up crims in Qatar, including those notorious journalists with their nasty questions and reporting of the facts {even on time}.)
City’s distaste for Grealish would still leave plenty of other suitors willing and able to soak up an inflated fee, as well as offer wages to keep him in spray tan for life, even taking into account Villa’s Fully Comp demand. Like City, Chelsea have a recent history of throwing it about a bit, and may even get some money off for taking on Villa assistant John Terry as part of the deal, even just to end all the begging and crying.
Barcelona may too be in need of a Happy Shopper replacement for Lionel Messi soon, their captain having also recently signed a new contract to 2021, while a new three year deal agreed by Arsenal skipper Pierre Emerick Aubameyang opens up the possibility of a summer vacancy on the left of Mikel Arteta’s side.
But who will replace Grealish himself? Well, Villa boss Dean Smith will be scouring the continent for recently well-publicised deals stating loyalty and commitment. Or failing that, Delph might fancy going back to Villa Park for the gig, citing regret at leaving in the first place, sorrow for saying he wasn't leaving when he was and annoyance that his current club Everton have signed some decent midfielders while he was getting himself injured again.
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