Jack Grealish stats analysis: Richard Jolly looks at the stats behind Aston Villa's captain and star man ahead of Carabao Cup final

Jack Grealish was a few months old the last time Aston Villa won a major trophy. Twenty-four years on from the 1996 League Cup final, he could become their first captain since Andy Townsend to lift silverware and emulate his great-great-grandfather, Billy Garraty, who helped Villa win the 1905 FA Cup.

If it might feel simplistic to say that the key to stopping Villa is to subdue Grealish, the alternative perspective is that they can be the closest thing to a one-man team in the current game. Everything at Villa flows through Grealish.

At the majority of clubs, the player on the ball most is a defender or a defensive midfielder. Not at Villa: they have one player in the top 75 in the Premier League for touches: Grealish, at 38th, with 1,651. None of the 37 above him generally operate in the final third. Grealish averages more key passes than any other Villa player. With the exception of new signing Mbwana Samatta, who has only played three games, he averages most shots. And he is fouled the most often.

It is the most distinct statistic but of his influence and his style of play. Stopping Grealish is often an illegal process. He has been fouled 122 times in the Premier League this season, 34 times more than anyone else (Wilfried Zaha is second). He was the most fouled player in the Championship last season, despite missing a third of the campaign. He was fouled 158 times, 45 more than Harry Wilson, then of Derby.

Yet in the Premier League, Villa have had less of the ball - they average 47.3 percent possession – but Grealish has remained an extraordinary outlier. He is fouled 4.9 times per game, Zaha 3.3, James Maddison 3.0 and everyone else less. In contrast, Sunday’s opponent Kevin de Bruyne is only fouled 0.7 times per game.

It reflects a different approach. De Bruyne is predominantly a passer and a crosser, Grealish a dribbler. In one respect, he bears comparison with Zaha, Adama Traore and Allan Saint-Maximin, who all take the ball upfield themselves and who average the most dribbles in the division. Either they take opponents out of the game or vice versa. Tellingly, the three players who drawn most bookings are Traore, Zaha and Grealish: 19 yellow cards have been shown for fouls on the Villa captain, including two to Bournemouth’s Jefferson Lerma in the same game. Manchester City, of course, have long been accused of committing tactical fouls, a charge Pep Guardiola has denied. However, in their first 25 league games this season, they committed 117 fouls to stop opposition breaks; tactical fouls, in short.

In another respect, Grealish belongs (and while he has spent much of this season in the front three) to a particular genre of midfielder: the Dembele type, the box-to-box runner who would make that journey with the ball. Mousa Dembele, during his three main seasons in Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham midfield, averaged between 2.4 and 2.9 dribbles per game. Grealish is now at 2.3, along with his injured team-mate John McGinn. Of those above him, only Mateo Kovacic regularly plays in the centre of midfield. Close behind him is Tanguy Ndombele, the designated Dembele replacement now; that could have been Grealish, for whom Spurs bid in 2018. It shows it is a rare skillset among those who can play in the middle of midfield.

Dembele was long faulted for his lack of end product. The same used to be said of Grealish. In his first 34 top-flight appearances, albeit when 18 were as a substitute and 16 in a team who were relegated with a mere 17 points, he got just one goal and one assist. This season he has seven goals and six assists. It puts him in a select group of eight players who have at least six of each, with the Liverpool forward line of Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, the City duo of De Bruyne and Riyad Mahrez, plus Tottenham’s Heung-Min Son and Raul Jimenez. Each of the others is in a rather better side: among those why ply their trade with bottom-half teams, only West Ham’s Robert Snodgrass has at least five in both categories.

In a different way, Grealish is in still more rarefied company. He has created 69 chances in the Premier League. It puts him one behind Norwich’s Emi Buendia and four behind Trent Alexander-Arnold with only the runaway leader De Bruyne (96) ahead of them.

Grealish is one ahead of his close friend, and potential rival for a place in the England squad, Maddison. It is a recurring theme. Grealish figures ahead, often only slightly, in most statistical categories, but he has done so playing in a weaker team that is more reliant on him. The only Villa player who was producing remotely similar numbers was McGinn, the man of the match in their Wembley play-off final in May, but he has not played since Christmas. So stop Grealish and you stop Villa? The conclusion for City may be simple.

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