Tim Sherwood: ‘Jack Grealish must focus on Aston Villa’

Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish will not be eligible for a call-up to the England squad for at least a month.

The 20-year-old Aston Villa winger was born in Solihull but has represented the Republic of Ireland at every age since Under-17 level, barring the senior side.

It is understood that the FA expects his worldwide clearance will not be granted for four to six weeks.

However, Grealish won’t be selected for England’s upcoming Euro 2016 qualifiers against Estonia and Lithuania next month.

Villa boss Tim Sherwood claimed at the weekend he would not accept an offer of £60 million for his services.

The performances of Grealish have impressed many in the game and it was no surprise to see Martin O’Neilll and Roy Hodgson declare their interest in him representing their respective national teams.

Having taken a year-long hiatus from worldwide football to mull over his options, Grealish announced his intention to play for England at senior global level on Monday.

“He’s got a lot of competition there for England so he needs to make sure that he is playing well for Aston Villa, and we’re sure he will”.

That means he will not be included in the squad for the next two qualifiers – which is named on Thursday – but he could feature in the friendlies against Spain and France in November.

“He has loads of potential – and that’s what it is at the moment”, he added.

“To be fair to him, I think he believes he’s good enough to get a regular place in the England team, otherwise he would have picked Ireland.”

“He would have got more regular global football with Ireland and it would have been great if he had picked us”.

We can have another week of keyboard warriors throwing their toys out of the pram and then they’ll probably rediscover their right hands when pundits and the media get bored of rehashing the fact he’s elected to play for the country of his birth.

He said: “I think England already recognise that he is a talent they would like to secure the services of”.