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CITY GROUND — They twirled their scarves in the air at the City Ground and they played the songs of old, those anthems of yesteryear that are suddenly back in fashion. This team has been through a lot over the years and a lot over the course of this season too. If it seems remarkable and ridiculous that it could still end in the fourth greatest season of their history, isn’t that just perfect Nottingham Forest.

Nothing is done, of course. It never could be on Thursday evening. But for the first time since more than a year ago, this is a team with truly positive momentum that believes it can bruise the noses of the supposedly bigger and better. That was their fuel last season. That was their fuel when Cloughie walked on the Trent. I hope you’re not stupid enough to write them off.

Chris Wood was the match-winner and may well be the season changer too. His recovery from a serious knee injury has – perhaps slightly inadvertently – altered the course of a campaign drifting towards who knows where. His penalty was pure and definitive and gave Emi Martinez no chance at all.

Wood’s return has allowed Vitor Pereira, the fourth and maybe most defining manager of Forest’s season, to switch formation. There are two strikers. There is high pressing and there are turnovers. There is Morgan Gibbs-White nominally starting out wide but basically acting as a magnet to wherever the ball is.

Near Gibbs-White is always Elliot Anderson; there was a passage of play in the second half, after Forest had scored their penalty, when the two exchanged five passes on the left wing, each more intricate and outrageous than the last. It persuaded the home crowd to ole while they were still wrought with tension. That’s what supreme talent does.

But for all of the improvements in Forest’s attack, they have conceded four goals in their previous nine games after five games without a clean sheet. That was the headline from Thursday night. Murillo was injured. Jair Cunha was injured. Morato had to play and was excellent. Ola Aina came off with an injury and academy product Zach Abbott came on.

And Neco Williams kept on keeping on, from minute one to 90 just like always. Of all the principal contenders to be Forest’s potential hero in Istanbul, if they get there, most will be midfielders or attackers. But Williams hasn’t just been one of the most consistent performers at the City Ground this season. He’s been arguably the best left-back in the Premier League this season and he was a contender for that same award in 2024-25 too.

WIlliams was one of the 2022-23 crop, that Nottingham Forest splurge that drew much mockery and opprobrium. Liverpool allowed him to leave for £17m because he was a young right-back and they had Trent Alexander-Arnold. Now Williams is comfortable on either side, comfortable going forwards and back, comfortable driving inside or crossing with his left and comfortable taking set pieces.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: Gibbs-White is stung by England exile – and Forest have reaped the rewards
• Daniel Storey: Stoke City are the most depressing club in English football

But it’s Williams’ one-on-one defending that is most impressive. He has a tigrish quality, a determination to compete for every ball and never give up whether he is faced with pace, guile, strength or a combination of all three. He is a tyro and a terrier and yet possesses the composure to start moves as well as block them. He is a future Wales captain, if they’re smart.

These are the qualities that Pereira has repeatedly insisted are non-negotiable, certainties if Forest are to push Aston Villa and keep their heads above water in the Premier League. Williams epitomises them.

As he wandered around the pitch after full-time, Williams’ forename was briefly sung on repeat by those who have grown to adore him. He still looks a little humbled, unsure of whether he is the right actor for the protagonist role. But make no mistake: he leads by example and by attitude.

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If Everton come up short in the race for European qualification this season, there will be more than a pang of regret for David Moyes.

In his second stint at Everton, Moyes is a man in a hurry. While the club’s football leadership team is building for the long-term – with the ambition of establishing themselves alongside the likes of Aston Villa and Newcastle United as regulars in gatecrashing the Champions League places in the next year or two – the Scot believes there is no time to waste.

That is why when some see issues for Everton qualifying for Europe – the squad would need significantly more than the planned-for four or five major signings to cope with the expanded fixture list – he sees a golden opportunity. And it is a chance that, if Newcastle, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea get their act together, might not be as easy to achieve as this season.

After stumbling in recent weeks, it now looks like a long shot. Three wins from their final four matches – starting with Monday night’s visit of title-chasing Manchester City – might be required.

Whatever ultimately ends up happening, the club have progressed. On and off the field, where a £30m front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with CMC Markets has been struck, there is confidence going into a summer where Everton – who have funds and scope to make first team-ready additions – intend to be “front foot” and attack the transfer market.

Ambitious targets – and Grealish optimism

First through the door is likely to be the returning Jack Grealish, with sources understood to be increasingly confident that a deal can be struck with City to extend the England winger’s time on Merseyside.

Everton are hoping for another loan, having committed around £12m to his first year, and there is a belief that Grealish’s desperation to return to the Hill Dickinson Stadium will help negotiations with City, which will open at the end of the season.

Beyond that, Everton’s approach will be fascinating. The dynamic between the football leadership board, who will lean into data and analytics, and Moyes is a fascinating one.

The Everton manager, for example, was advocating that the club speculated to accumulate in January, pushing for experienced signings that would strengthen their push for Europe.

In the event the club, mindful of financial restrictions that have landed the club in trouble in the recent past, decided to keep their powder dry ahead of what one source suggested would be a “big summer” at the club. Now they have decisions to make.

Striker and right-back at the top of the wishlist

The club desperately need a striker and – whatever happens next with Thierno Barry after a decidedly mixed first season following a £27m move from Villarreal – they intend to add another forward.

There is some support for reviving interest in Liam Delap, who opted to move to Chelsea last year and is likely to be made available this summer for around the £30m he cost 12 months ago, but it is by no means unanimous. His first season at Stamford Bridge represents a red flag to some and other well-placed sources believe the club are more likely to turn to the European market again, given inflated Premier League prices.

Right-back is a priority area but two centre-back names being explored are Arsenal’s England defender Ben White and John Stones, who is understood to be keen to remain in the North West when he leaves City in the summer.

The 31-year-old spent three years at Everton – working with Moyes for six months – and possesses the  leadership qualities and experience that the Toffees coach believes will be key to moving the squad forward.

Contract extensions incoming

There will also be continuity, with Everton close to triggering a year extension in the contract of left-back Vitalii Mykolenko. There is also a desire to extend Idrissa Gueye’s spell for another year, but that extension requires the veteran midfielder to agree. It is not viewed as a certainty that he will stay.

And Everton insiders remain confident that midfielder Merlin Röhl and Tyler Dibling, who has been used sparingly this season, will come good after slow first years.

Conversations with agents ahead of the summer have been positive. There is a sense that Everton is once again seen as a “destination”, with Grealish’s presence and the excellent form of the likes of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and James Garner giving them a platform to sell themselves to potential targets.

“Whatever happens this season, we’re absolutely moving in the right direction,” one source says.  

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It’s complicated, but to quickly summarise Burnley’s financial position; they are not in as perilous a position as people think. The major cause for concern is the club’s footballing strategy.

Given they have debts of around £115m, most of which came because of owners ALK Capital’s leveraged takeover of the club in 2020, there were fears a fire sale of players would again be needed to simply stay afloat next season.

While £200m of new recruits over the past few years failed to even make a fight of it back in the Premier League, off the field, The i Paper has learned that financial restructuring on loans taken out to fund their transfer market failings is under way.

“ALK and Velocity [Sports Partners, the sports investment arm of ALK Capital] are manipulating what they know – finances,” one source says.

“Managing the football side and communication is a very different story.

“There is a certain level of arrogance, audacity in ALK/Velocity believing that they can replicate the operations of Tony Bloom and Matthew Benham [at Brighton and Brentford] when nobody at the club comes from that modelling background and has not been refining their capabilities in the field for the best part of 30 years or more.”

Brighton and Brentford’s Moneyball approach, taking a strong data element to their recruitment approach, before selling their incredible finds for hundreds of millions and still progressing, has reached new heights this season, with qualification for next season’s Champions League, astonishingly, still a possibility for both.

Burnley tried it on their last sojourn in the Premier League under Vincent Kompany – spending money his predecessor Sean Dyche could only dream of – in 2023-24. All it did was saddle the Lancashire side with even more debt, and very few points.

The policy – to build, maintain and develop a core of young, inexperienced players mixed in with some seasoned pros – remains one similar to that of Kompany’s ill-fated top-flight campaign.

“The club appear to be in the early part of this new strategy that unfortunately has seen few positive signs and has left a significant proportion of the fanbase having no faith in the owner, recruitment team, the manager and his coaching team, along with many of the players,” a source adds.

“There remains a need to reduce the size of the squad. Outgoings are expected and if they are fringe players, it could easily be around 10 or more – there are so many injured and out on loan. Plus there are a few who don’t look like they will make the grade

“There should, unlike last time, not be the need to sell more than one or two of the core group.”

ALK completed a takeover of Espanyol earlier this season, a team tipped to challenge for the Champions League places. Instead, the La Liga side are just above the relegation zone.

“There remains a need to reduce the size of the squad,” a source continues.

“Outgoings are expected and if they are fringe players, it could easily be around 10 or more – there are so many injured and out on loan. Plus there are a few who don’t look like they will make the grade

“There should, unlike last time, not be the need to sell more than one or two of the core group.”

To bring in much of the current crop, Burnley took on what are effectively payday loans, adding to worries over finances.

Burnley entered into a £40m factoring agreement with London-based Fasanara Capital in January 2025; this means that a proportion of incoming transfer fee instalments goes to them rather than the club. This factoring loan is thought to close in January 2027.

There has been no refinancing at the club since it borrowed a reported nine-figure sum from American private equity group MGG in January 2024, to pay off £89m in debts and gain some additional funds.

Around 75-80 per cent of the debt, upon release of the club’s last accounts, was scheduled to have been paid off by the close of this financial year, the majority of that last season. The next accounts should confirm this when they are shown at Companies House early next month. The current loans are scheduled to end in 2028.

One potential problem that could put a severe dent in the finances is that midfielder Florentino’s loan move is understood to have an obligation to make the deal permanent at the end of the season, taking the total fee to around £22.5m, just under their club record.

The squad is evidently not good enough for the Premier League. But is it even capable of securing another immediate return to the top flight?

“No team has ever yo-yoed three times consecutively and next year’s Championship will possibly one of the hardest ever to get out of, given who is going down and the possibility of the likes of Southampton, Ipswich, Middlesbrough, Wrexham and Birmingham City alongside the relegated trio,” another source adds.

“Some may be complacent about Burnley’s last four seasons in the Championship each with automatic promotion, earning 93, 93, 101 and 100 points respectively in the process.

“All of that was done with key players signed by Sean Dyche – there are none left now and there is nowhere near the same knowhow or fight in what is there now.”

Some names could leave. Zian Flemming has impressed and scored goals. Former Manchester United midfielder Hannibal Mejbri could attract suitors, as could Maxime Esteve and Jaidon Anthony.

Top earner Kyle Walker is expected to leave, too. However, that is about it in terms of players whom the club would struggle to keep. Another damning indictment on a transfer policy where past mistakes have simply not been addressed.

Read more

• Michael Hincks: Birmingham City and the big ‘what-if’
• Daniel Storey: Stoke City are the most depressing club in English football

Whether Scott Parker stays put remains to be seen, with Steven Gerrard understood to be a potential option should he leave. Whoever is in charge is nonetheless likely to have a more settled squad than many of his relegated predecessors. The jury is still out on whether that is a good or a bad thing.

“I think we are more likely to do a Leicester,” another source says. “The recruitment has been that bad.”

Burnley did not respond to The i Paper’s requests for comment.

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Birmingham City are as high up the football ladder as they have been for a decade, and yet their solid Championship campaign still ends with what-ifs.

Chris Davies’ side sit 10th in the table heading into the final day of the regular campaign on Saturday, travelling to Portsmouth for what has evolved into a dead-rubber.

Just above them, Wrexham, Hull City, and Derby County will all fight it out for sixth place, with the final play-off spot up for grabs and just one point separating all three sides.

To say Blues fans are jealous is too complicated to say with complete conviction, but undoubtedly Wrexham’s possible shot at reaching the Premier League will sting Birmingham’s owners.

Wrexham and Birmingham came up from League One together, and the former were 18th after 10 Championship games before a turnaround propelled them into play-off contention.

The fact Birmingham – seven points adrift – can point towards just a few more results going their way to have been in contention themselves is what has drawn mixed feelings from this campaign among supporters.

It is not lost on Blues fans that 10th is a sign of progress. The club previously circled the Championship drain for seven years before they eventually, and what felt inevitably, went down in 2023-24.

They responded emphatically, buoyed by the backing of co-owner Tom Wagner and spending big to return to the Championship in record fashion as an entirely different beast.

This time around, survival was not the aim. Norwich City, Southampton and Ipswich Town have achieved back-to-back promotions to the Premier League before, and Wagner felt Blues could as well.

There was, though, an understanding.

“This ambition is there to inspire us, but because of what happened last time they know how unforgiving it can be,” Davies said in August.

“The ambition is great but there’s a clear understanding of how hard it is.”

The Championship is a field of dreams, with 19 of the 24 second-tier clubs having played Premier League football since 1992, and eight of those clubs playing 10 or more seasons in the top tier in that time.

That does not include Birmingham, who have enjoyed seven Premier League campaigns but none since 2010-11. They are, therefore, one of plenty have-been wannabes bouncing around the Championship and below, although no second-tier club, they would argue, have quite the same vision.

This was marked when plans for their new 62,000-capacity stadium were revealed in November, proof their ambition was as lofty as the 12 chimneys set to surround the ground.

Birmingham were 11th at the time of this unveiling. They had previously been as high as fifth – in August after three games – and as low as 17th in October. They wanted to look up, but they were back in 17th come January as patchy streaks of form made for muddled reading.

It has, therefore, been a funny, see-saw season. A seven-game winless run was followed by eight unbeaten, while more recently two sets of three-straight losses checkered any play-off hopes.

The atmosphere at St Andrew’s turned toxic in their last home defeat, to Blackburn Rovers on 3 April, with frustrations over their style of play and decisions over personnel, sticking with certain favourites and dropping defender Phil Neumann, bubbling over into jeers.

The boos put Davies’ position in the limelight, raising the awkward question of whether the 41-year-old, in his first role in management, has taken them as far as he can, but a late flourish has included a win over Wrexham and soothed some dissenters.

“For the fans to show that kind of appreciation to me on the final game definitely means a lot,” Davies said, having felt the love from the stands after the win over Bristol City.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: Birmingham City’s naked ambition is becoming a problem
• Tom Wagner: My four-year plan for Birmingham City

Four unbeaten at just the right time, and a willingness to adapt that might just have bought Davies a season. This upturn in results has coincided with Neumann being recalled and consistent starts for August Priske, the 6ft 5in striker, and winger Carlos Vicente.

Both Priske and Vicente are January signings, proof Birmingham are forever on the move, and while the identity of the eventual play-off winners may leave them green with envy, supporters will know they are in a far stronger position than where they were two years ago.

They would have taken 10th at the start of the season, and while that did not quite allude to the rollercoaster that followed, this strange hinterland looks to be the foundation for a much stronger push next term.

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Real Madrid is a club overrun with over-inflated egos, one more won’t make any difference. Jose Mourinho can just slot right in alongside the real gaffer, Kylian Mbappe, Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Junior et al, and glory in the specialness of it all. 

Whether it will be enough to placate the fans and avoid a second trophyless season is another matter. Since his initial three-year stint at the Santiago Bernabeu ended 12 years ago, Mourinho has become a football itinerant, as well as irritant, wringing the last drops of that once-powerful cache to maintain what relevance he can.

In terms of coaching significance and ideas, the Mourinho manual has little application left. His brand of minimalist, joyless, utilitarian football began to erode during his second spell at Chelsea. Despite being unbeaten since his return to Benfica in September, they trail Sporting Lisbon by seven points in Liga Portugal.

Madrid is so unlike any other institution since the coach is secondary in importance to the real centre of power, the players. Or make that one player, Mbappe. Like Cristiano Ronaldo before him, Mbappe embodies absolutely a galactico culture that goes back all the way to Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas.

Mourinho is more effective at lesser clubs where the star power inheres in him alone, where the need is theirs for him. Clearly at Real Madrid and Manchester United, the special ones wear boots. It is the players who forge the brand. Even Sir Alex Ferguson understood that.

Though control is sacrificed, there are compensations. The coach at Madrid enjoys the same structural advantages Mourinho identified at Manchester City in his recent takedown of Pep Guardiola. In other words it is hard to fail if you play by the rules, which means following Mbappe’s orders and drawing media fire where necessary.

It was too much for Mourinho to acknowledge the greatness of Guardiola, the zeitgeist monster at Barcelona during their shared seasons in La Liga. Yeah, sure, a great coach, beautiful football and all that, but, he claimed, no Ferguson, who built the infrastructure that delivered the team as well as the methodology that coached it.

So what would Madrid be getting? Brand? Tick. Previous club experience? Tick. Theatre? Tick. Compliance? Tick. Deference? Tick. Vision? Don’t be silly.

At Manchester United, the touchline-skipping energy that helped forge the Mourinho mystique during Sporting’s Champions League victory at Old Trafford 22 years ago, had reduced to parking the bus. He was frankly a disaster, his shrunken vision wildly at odds with the United way and the grandiose sense that he had of himself.

The gathering poverty of his football at Old Trafford was camouflaged by a League Cup and Europa League double in his first season. Ultimately it was this that persuaded Tottenham Hotspur to give him a go in 2019 after United got rid following a desultory 3-1 defeat at Anfield.

They loved him at Roma. Well, Serie A, where he burnished his early reputation at Inter Milan, is perhaps best suited temperamentally to Mourinho’s counter-culture values. Moreover, victory in the Conference League put a European trophy in a Roman boardroom for the first time since Caesar controlled the Forum.

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For all that, the trajectory was unmistakably downward. Twelve years on from arguably his greatest achievement, winning the Champions League with Inter, here he was framing Conference League victory as elite success when in reality it was a low grade token at third tier European stock.

His brief, 14-month spell with Fenerbahce was searingly apposite, perfectly reflecting the taciturn malcontent he has become. The football was pedestrian and colourless, he fell out with the board and could not lay a glove on Galatasaray. He left by mutual consent, which was a polite way of saying get outta here and don’t darken our door again.

Florentino Perez is exercising his presidential prerogative to push for Mourinho’s return. In the context of a disappointing campaign in which Xabi Alonso came and went and Alvaro Arbeloa respectfully put the bibs out, Mourinho at least represents familiarity and carries sufficient legacy power to win over the gullible until something better turns up or he forgets himself and tries to bin Mbappe.

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Sheffield Wednesday are the Football League club most embedded in crisis; no arguments there. At best the sirens still sound, the uncertainty reigns and next season will be a fight to avoid a consecutive relegation. Nobody sensible would swap places with Wednesday.

But proximity to calamity is not the only way to measure misery; sometimes being too far from anything at all can be just as depressing. This weekend Wednesday will fill Hillsborough because of what there is to fight for. Last weekend at Stoke City, home supporters went simply because they have always gone. And they lost again. This is existing more than living.

Stoke have now finished in the bottom half of the table for 10 seasons in a row, two in the Premier League and eight in the Championship. Their last half-decade has seen glacially slow decline but decline all the same: 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th. Finishing 19th is still in their hands and who would bet against them? Ask the owners, I guess.

The most lamentable element of this story is that Stoke have so many advantages. They have a local family who are extremely wealthy and perfectly prepared to fund the club. The Coates have written off £210m in loans to leave Stoke debt-free. The club now own the training ground and stadium. Ticket prices have been frozen for almost 20 years. Stoke rank in the top half for Championship wage bills. They get 24,000 in most weeks.

And for what? Persistent failure versus expectation and stated ambition. A fanbase that laughs at the lack of progress otherwise it would cry and cry. A blame game that is often more interesting to supporters than the matches – and seasons – that they are forced to endure.

That blame starts with the players. This team perennially collapses when in promising positions – remember they were second in the Championship at the end of November. What happens to them in the second half of each season? Three wins in their last 19 now. Five wins in their last 23 last season. Six in 22 in 2023-24.

But then the faces change and everything else stays the same. Stoke have signed 30 players – an entire first-team squad – since June 2023 and that fails to include 18 incoming loans over the same period. They can’t all share some deep physical or psychological weakness.

And how on earth is this club so continually incapable of servicing its strikers? The last time a Stoke player scored more than 15 league goals in a season, Ashley Cole had just made his England debut. It is the longest run in English professional football.

So we should blame the managers, then. Certainly Mark Robins has done himself few favours and is under pressure. Stoke rank 20th for xG and 19th for xG against – translation: this is quite a bad football team. His 30-odd per cent win record is not what anyone was signing up for.

But then that’s just what happens in this Bermuda triangle of managerial competence. Stoke have had eight different head coaches in eight years, of various shapes, sizes and philosophies. Each arrives with hope and hunger and sees both fade into the fog. See the paragraph on players and play it again.

Blame the sporting director, then, and plenty of supporters are. Former player Jon Walters was appointed to oversee long-term development and football operations in April 2024. Recruitment has not worked. Managers have not worked out. Performances and results have not improved. They ask: is he just here because he knows the place?

One emblematic issue is Dutch striker Milan Smit, signed on loan in January with Nathan Lowe leaving for League One, also on a loan deal. Smit has scored two goals and there is a reported £4.8m obligation to make the move permanent this summer. It all just smacks of expensive tail-chasing.

Blame the guy who appointed Walters, then. John Coates – sister of Denise – was appointed vice-chairman in 2015, joint-chair in 2020 and became outright owner in 2024. He is the ultimate authority and the decision maker. The buck stops with him.

And we arrive roughly back where we started. The Coates family have certainly spent money – north of £400m. There is no doubting the commitment or the generosity. But at every level of this club, application is lacking.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: Portsmouth’s survival is the most underrated story of the season
• Daniel Storey: Rochdale, York City and the maddest final day of a season I’ve ever seen

Nostalgia can be unhelpful inside football clubs and their fanbases. That’s one theory here: Stoke had such an extended purple patch, a decade in the Premier League after almost quarter of a century without top-flight football, that its absence created a vacuum where little could grow because nothing could ever match up. You start falling and realise that drifting might be the only other thing you ever do.

I think that lets Stoke City off the hook. Supporters aren’t yearning for Tony Pulis, Rory Delap and the 2010s, as much as they might still think of them and the pictures still adorn the walls. They’re simply asking for a little competence and for this desperate cloud of futility to be lifted by those who clearly possess the wealth to do so, if they could only get things right.

Fail to do so soon and the problems really start stacking up. A generation of Stoke City supporters will see atrophy as normality and will rightly wonder what the point is at all.

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A picture may be worth a thousand words but it rarely tells the whole story. Yet many have rushed to judgement following the latest round of viral Jack Grealish photos.

The 30-year-old has been photographed asleep at a bar in Manchester, with a table of drinks in front of him and what appears to be a friend trying to rouse him to no avail.

Sold to The Sun and now spread across social media, the photos have elicited extreme assumptions about the Manchester City winger, who is currently on loan at Everton.

Without knowledge of how much he has drunk, claims of alcohol problems. Without any further context, questions over his professionalism, given both City and Everton were playing around the reported time. And without knowing his mood, he is supposedly either sad, depressed or relaxed.

All this from a few still images. What we can safely assume is that he was tired, and what we do know is that Grealish has been out of action since January and will miss the remainder of the season – a foot injury ruling him out of World Cup contention as well.

EXCLUSIVE: England ace Jack Grealish spotted snoozing at rooftop bar after boozy afternoon drinking session https://t.co/FVHCHCnAHW

— The Sun Football (@TheSunFootball) April 26, 2026

He may not play a competitive match for seven months in total. He has shared his own pictures of the arduous rehabilitation process – featuring scooters, saunas, physiotherapy and gym sessions – on Instagram, and yet these photos of him snoozing are supposedly proof he has chosen alcohol over his comeback.

Such leaps are made because social media is a platform for assumptions, and because in this crossover age of celebrity and camera phones, we have allowed for the most minuscule pieces of information to form conclusions about people we don’t actually know.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVoiG-sCN7h/?img_index=1

The smartphone is a torment for celebrities. The public are the paparazzi, and this normalisation has drastically blurred the lines around privacy – many forgetting, or not caring, that what takes a split-second can impact a lifetime.

Past Premier League footballers may lament the modern money but they are glad to have missed the era of camera phones – the constant request for selfies, the attempts to antagonise while being recorded, and the YouTubers who attend games only to record themselves.

Add the sly photos and videos taken beyond the pitch and out in public. Erling Haaland walking down a street, Pep Guardiola on a bike, Grealish in a bar. Football in the 1990s would have played out very differently had there been this same level of intrusion, and while some may think Grealish better fits this bygone generation, he is merely the current player who the camera is pointed on most.

He can feel the lens too. In 2023 Grealish bristled at his “party boy” reputation after celebrating Manchester City’s treble with plenty of alcohol and no regrets.

“I just enjoy myself, I’m living my dream,” he said back then. He alluded to there being a fixation with them which arguably only David Beckham, Paul Gascoigne and Wayne Rooney can relate to among England footballers.

“I wasn’t the only one,” he added. “I think a lot of the time you’ll see everyone recording me, I could show you all this stuff of other people where they were the same… We all enjoyed ourselves, other people enjoy themselves where the cameras weren’t.”

With the spotlight firmly on him, for some that alone makes these new photos inexcusable. You can’t get snapped asleep at a bar if you’re not out in public asleep at a bar, and yet here is Grealish gifting the vultures.

That is his fault and the fault of those around him, but around the wider issue of privacy he remains easy prey. When the pound signs flash up, and the moment prompts opportunity for profit, any worry over what may count as intrusion becomes secondary. Look! A regular guy in an irregular job drinking alcohol. And because we all consume that content, we are all to blame.

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