Pep Guardiola says Jack Grealish is wrong in his assessment of his Man City performances

Jack Grealish needs to stop worrying about his stats and just focus on making a contribution to the Manchester City team, says Pep Guardiola.

The £100million British record signing is set to return to the team in tonight’s FA Cup fifth-round tie at Peterborough, after more than a fortnight out with a shin problem. And he said recently that, while Guardiola has already improved him as a player, the fact he hasn’t “had the actual stats” meant it did not look like he had progressed since leaving Aston Villa.

Grealish has two goals and two assists in the Premier League this season, along with one of each in the Champions League. But Guardiola told him to forget about meaningless numbers, and assess his impact on the team as a whole.

Asked about Grealish’s stats comment, the manager said: "Maybe he's wrong. Maybe he listens too much to what people say. It's wrong but the statistics are better and he plays quite similar to Aston Villa in terms of ball contact.

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"He had the chances against Crystal Palace in 20 minutes to score three goals. It didn't happen but it's going to happen. We didn't buy him to score 45 goals. He doesn’t have that quality he has another one.”

And Guardiola said that too many players now pay too much attention to their stats, rather than seeing the bigger picture.

“Always we talk about the statistics - the players today play for the statistics but this is the biggest mistake they can do. We're involved in that. Statistics are just a bit of information that we have but there are players that make the team play good and they are not into statistics. But the players say how many goals I score or how many assists or...

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