Nine months before returning to Manchester City as Pep Guardiola’s assistant, Juanma Lillo wrote a personal lament about how modern football’s increasing obsession with methodology had robbed the sport of its mavericks.

It is doubtful Jack Grealish has ever been alerted to Lillo’s musings but it is also hard to believe that much of what the Spaniard said would not chime with a player who has been rendered increasingly impotent in Guardiola’s tactical straitjacket.

Grealish has never muttered anything but praise for Guardiola but you could easily imagine the City midfielder quietly nodding along in agreement were Lillo’s comments ever recited to him.

“At club level, if you go to a training session in Norway or one in South Africa, they’ll be the same,” Lillo opined. “‘Look inside to find spaces outside’, ‘pass here, pass there’. The good dribblers are over, my friend. Where can you find them? I can’t see any.

“Everything is ‘dos toques’ – two touches. Because they all train with two touches, they all play with two touches. We’ve enforced ‘El Dostoquismo’, as I call it. And I say this as a big exponent of a lot of these methods and ways of thinking! I’m like a regretful father.

“It’s true now that there aren’t any bad players anymore but there are no exceptional players either. In trying to kill the bad guys, we’ve killed the good guys, too.”

Lillo’s words were penned in an article for The Athletic in December 2022 when the World Cup finals were taking place in Qatar but they make for particularly intriguing reading now in the context of both Grealish and City’s struggles.

Close your eyes, read Lillo’s words again, and it is almost impossible not to think of Grealish receiving the ball on the touchline, momentarily sizing up his man and then passing safely back inside amid familiar sighs from wistful City fans longing to see the daring, dancing entertainer from Aston Villa.

During City’s extraordinary Treble season – Grealish’s second at the club – the England forward was a vital cog in a winning machine out on the left flank.

But age, injuries and shattered confidence have thrown an almighty spanner in that machine’s works and, as Guardiola searches urgently for solutions after an almost unfathomable run of eight defeats in 11 matches, it is high time he removed Grealish’s restraining belt. City no longer require the winger who became an instrument of control in Guardiola’s carefully honed system.

They need the swashbuckler, the risk-taker, above all the maverick who would breed panic and uncertainty running at defences that would instinctively want to take a step back whenever the pretty boy with giant thighs and gorgeous hair picked up possession.

Grealish’s return to Villa on Saturday lunchtime offers a reminder of what English football has lost but which Guardiola could still retrieve if only he were willing to liberate the 29-year-old over the next six months.

Grealish showing signs of improvement in new position

There were clear glimpses of what Grealish could offer from a less constrained central midfield role as a No 8 in City’s 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest earlier this month – their only victory in this dreadful sequence of results.

Guardiola was so impressed he even suggested Grealish was capable of playing as a defensive midfielder and it was striking that night how much better City were for releasing the handbrake. Kevin De Bruyne categorised the formation almost as a 3-3-4.

Yet the system was much more cautious and inhibited in a 2-0 defeat by Juventus in Turin a week later, when City lacked dynamism and Grealish found the going harder in the middle, and by the time Sunday’s Manchester derby came around he was back on the bench. Upon his introduction in the 77th minute, he found himself marooned back on the left wing.

After so long stationed out there, it is probably unrealistic to think Grealish is going to be an overnight success in a central role. The player’s own confidence is not exactly sky high at the moment. But, with De Bruyne still working his way back to full fitness and Phil Foden out of sorts, there is a strong case to be made for Guardiola persisting with Grealish through the middle. It is not as if it has been working for him – or the team on the flanks, just as the rewards could be significant were Grealish to rediscover some of the flair, panache and threat he frequently exhibited at Villa.

Embracing a little unpredictability might be just the tonic Guardiola and City need. It is over a year now since Grealish last scored for City, a bleak run encompassing 35 games, and there have been just two assists in the past 18 months. It is a damning statistic for a player who conjured 10 assists in his final season with Villa alone.

City need to get Grealish into the areas where his skills can inflict damage and that means dribbling and running more with the ball in central areas. He scored eight league goals from shots after running with the ball in his final two seasons with Villa but it is telling that in his entire time with City he has not managed one from such carries.

Lillo said he enjoyed the World Cup because there were fewer instances of players being “trapped by the omnipotence of the manager”.

“It really is wonderful because we, the managers, have too much influence,” he said. “It’s unbearable. We have our own ideas and we say that we espouse them to help people to understand the game. Bull----! It should be for the players to understand the game as they understand it.”

Maybe it is time Lillo had a quiet word in Guardiola’s ear about Grealish.