Inside the Manchester City dressing room at half-time of Chelsea victory

The provider of Manchester City’s winning goal against Chelsea on Thursday night, Jack Grealish has offered an insight into the half-time exchanges at Stamford Bridge.

The England international provided the game-deciding assist when his left-footed ball across the face of the Chelsea goal was tapped home by an onrushing Riyad Mahrez at the back post.

The former Aston Villa star and captain is entering a rich vein of form for the Premier League champions, and has now registered as many Premier League assists for Manchester City in the last three games (3) as he managed in his first 34 games for the club.

However, Grealish was called upon by his manager to turn around a frustrating and largely poor opening 45 minutes from the starting line-up that began proceedings in West London.

Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Jack Grealish revealed that Pep Guardiola had a ‘few words’ with his players at half-time and insisted that things needed changing after a hugely underwhelming first period of play against Chelsea.

“I won’t go into too much detail (into Pep Guardiola’s half-time talk),” Grealish said. “The manager changed a few things, had a few words.

“We come out and the first 20, 30 minutes especially we dominated and had more chances. When we got the goal we had control of the game but they had a few themselves.”

Grealish came on for Manchester City on the hour mark as Pep Guardiola looked to add a different edge to his attacking line, offering more composure when in dangerous positions and across the final third.

When quizzed on what were the manager’s specific instructions, Jack Grealish said, “The manager said, when you come on, he said be aggressive, attack (Cesar) Azpilicueta, and stay high and wide.”

After a relatively slow start to the season, Jack Grealish now finds himself slowly climbing up the ladder for goal contributions in the Manchester City squad.

With a goal and three assists to his name, Grealish is now level with Ilkay Gundogan in terms of total goal contributions, with defensive midfielder Rodrigo ranking above him on a total of five contributions after a stellar campaign so far from the Spaniard in all departments.