Matt Maher: Every player has a price, £100million is Jack Grealish’s

On the pitch, he was the driving force behind a rapid rebirth which has seen the club rise from the doldrums of the Championship, to a point where they are now poised to attack the top half of the Premier League.

Nassef Sawiris, the club’s billionaire co-owner, once described Grealish as Villa’s ‘heart and soul’. In many ways, those were fitting words except, ultimately, no player can ever be bigger than the club and in the business of football everyone has their price.

For Grealish, that was £100million. Impossible though it is to extract the emotion from his departure for Villa supporters, receiving a British record fee for a player with fewer than 100 Premier League appearances, who has never played in European competition, never scored an international goal and who has missed chunks of two of the last three seasons with shin injuries is a quite remarkable deal.

Of course, no-one falls in love with football reading a balance sheet. For the romantics, Grealish’s move to Manchester City feels all wrong, the adored hero leaving his boyhood club for the champions who would probably retain their crown without him and who, just a few months ago, were among a group plotting to break up the game as we know it.

It is not just that he is the most unique and probably finest player the region, let alone Villa, has produced in a generation.

Neither is it simply down to the fact thousands decked in claret and blue roaring him on every week from the stands saw someone living their own childhood dream.

Grealish was able to connect with his fanbase in a way most players in the modern game can only dream.

In many ways, he was just like all the rest, a millionaire living in a rural mansion, dining in restaurants where the starters cost the same as a replica kit.

And yet he always felt accessible, in part because of his outgoing personality and willingness to engage with fans but also because of his flaws. Grealish made mistakes, screwed up and wasn’t scared to acknowledge it.

“Everyone knows I like a night out,” he quipped during an interview with the Express & Star earlier this year.

In a sport increasingly obsessed by PR management, Grealish has always stood out. He is real and easy to root for. England supporters who got behind him in their droves this summer discovered what Villa fans have known for years.

For Villa he was largely brilliant from the summer of 2017, when then boss Steve Bruce delivered a few home truths to a player still struggling to match the hype triggered by his breakthrough moment in an FA Cup semi-final win over Liverpool two years previously.

In 2018, Grealish came within a whisker of joining Tottenham as a then cash-strapped Villa teetered on the brink of administration.

Indeed, an offer of just £15m would likely have been enough to force their hand but Spurs chief Daniel Levy overplayed his hand and when Sawiris and Wes Edens arrived to rescue Villa, the deal was off.

In each of the next two seasons Grealish’s future hung in the balance heading into the final matches as Villa won promotion through play-offs in 2019 and then survived on the last day, courtesy of his goal, 12 months later.

A departure then might have been easier for supporters to take but Villa would have been nowhere near so well compensated. After Grealish signed a new deal last September, the team took a big step forward and the accusation from some is that he is abandoning the club just when things are starting to get good again.

That is incredibly harsh on a player who has done so much to advance Villa’s fortunes. The cold, hard reality is that for all the distance travelled, Villa are still a long way from the space currently inhabited by City.

Grealish’s emotional attachment to Villa is undoubtedly strong. Leaving everything you have ever known is never going to be easy. Yet ultimately, Grealish is a professional footballer first and a Villa fan a very distant second. He has never made any secret of his Champions League ambitions and if you are not going to take the chance to fulfil them when the champions are willing to make you the most expensive player in the history of British football, when are you?

Even the most heartbroken of Villa supporters must surely accept he has earned the opportunity?

Villa themselves had to be shrewd. Their preference was always for Grealish to stay and they could have done nothing more in their attempts to convince him.

But there are always limits to what you can do when a player has expressed their preference to depart. The bigger the pay rise Villa were prepared to offer, the greater the risk of destabilising the dressing room.

Instead, the money received for Grealish offers them the chance to push on and if it cannot be reinvested effectively then it is unlikely the grand plan of pursuing European football would have worked anyway, regardless of whether their talisman remained.

Sensibly, Villa’s recruitment team recognise the futility of trying to replace such a unique player like-for-like.

To a large extent, Grealish has dictated the style of Dean Smith’s team and there is likely to be a chance of approach. This week’s shock swoop for Danny Ings (a deal completed without any media sources getting a sniff) was the precursor to what are likely to be a fascinating final few weeks of the transfer window.

Grealish, meanwhile, moves on to a new challenge.

Making his mark at the Etihad won’t be easy yet he unquestionably has the talent and attitude to be a difference-maker in Pep Guardiola’s star-studded team.

No-one who has chronicled his journey to this point would bet against him.

Villa will look to move on quickly. In time, there is no reason they and Grealish cannot both realise their big ambitions albeit, they will do so apart.