Jack Grealish is Manchester City’s new hype man as Rodri runs engine room

Perhaps when Jack Grealish signed for Manchester City, at the moment that contract was sealed, his elevation to this rarefied air confirmed, he might have imagined himself, just for one brief moment, swaggering, socks down, through his own ticker-tape parade, showered with glory, glitter, noise, screwed up pieces of white paper.

Although perhaps not like this. Maybe if Grealish squinted a little the faces of the middle Yorkshiremen pelting him with litter might have resembled, if you did not listen too hard, an adoring chorus, a Grealish super-fandom event.

But it did not really matter. Because this was an excellent day for City, and a good one for Grealish too, who was no more than solid, who fulfilled his new brief of provocateur in chief, hype man, distractor of crowds; but who ended the day as part of a team that is once again one point clear at the top of the Premier League table, having breezed through a game but outmatched Leeds United.

The paper thing was weird. Why didn’t anyone seem to mind? Is this just OK now? Football crowds have generally had it with stewards. The gig is up here. These game souls paid a fixed hourly wage to deal with the herd-aggressions of a population that is, even at the best of times, pretty close to the edge, are not going to put themselves on the line for the brand. The police are generally absent, or following current policy of videoing the whole thing like a bunch of teenage voyeurs.

So the paper continued to fly, albeit harmlessly enough. Grealish beamed and shrugged and volleyed one away. And who knows, this might just have felt like a victory parade all the same. There were some fine moments in this 4-0 win. Phil Foden produced the pass of the game for Gabriel Jesus’s goal and