Follow us on Twitter @claretandview // Words by Mitchell Grimes (@mitchell_grimes)

Big things have been expected of Grealish for years now and he is still yet to fully deliver. He’s shown glimpses of his undeniable talent but overall we are yet to see his best.

Season 17/18 was tipped to be a big year for Jack but with the horrible kidney injury he suffered in the pre-season friendly against Watford, he has been set back a fair bit.

However, Grealish still has a massive role to play in the remainder of the season.

Villa are travelling quite nicely at the moment, with only the one defeat in the last 9 games, being against a very good Wolves outfit, and coming off a great win against a strong Fulham side.

Before the horrible kidney injury, Bruce had stated that he planned to build the team around Jack this season, playing him in the number 10 role, just behind the striker.

However, with the recent success of playing in a 4-4-2 formation, plans might have changed slightly, but playing against the better teams in the league I expect Bruce to play 3 in the middle just like against Fulham after being outclassed by Wolves with the 2.

Jack has started his comeback playing 60 minutes for the under 23s in their 2-0 victory against Wolves last week and was composed and tidy with the ball.

Getting minutes into Jack is the most important thing at the moment after missing out on several months of football. He’s expected to have another run with the under 23s this week as they take on Reading and hopefully return to the first team over the next few weeks, with next weekend’s derby probably coming a bit too early for jack to have any involvement.

Grealish can add that touch of magic and turn a 0 – 0 draw into a 1 – 0 which will be vital in our promotion push this season. He didn’t have a stellar 16/17 season but in my opinion he was one of our better players, scoring 5 goals and some pretty important ones too, such as the late screamer against Wigan to gift us the 3 points and the late equaliser against Brighton on the last day of the season. This is exactly what I expect him to be doing this season, and giving us that extra element to be able to go toe to toe with the better teams in the competition.

Hopefully when Jack is integrated back into the first team, he picks up where he left off, scoring, assisting and having that extra touch of class our side has been screaming out for years.

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