'Move on' - why Gabby Agbonlahor is backing Jack Grealish to bounce back
Aston Villa news | The former Villans icon believes that Jack Grealish's generous nature will help him thrive
by James Rushton, https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/authors/james-rushton/Former Aston Villa hero Gabby Agbonlahor believes that current Villa Park icon Jack Grealish has what it takes to make it up to Villa fans following his breach of lockdown rules in March.
A Range Rover bumped into two cars in Solihull in the early days of the Government's lockdown regulations, with the the Villans' captain noting that he had been at the scene.
Grealish acknowledged his error in a video post to his twitter feed shortly after news broke of the breach.
"I just want to do a quick video message to say how deeply embarrassed I am by what has happened this weekend," said Grealish on the 30th of March.
"I know it’s a tough time for everyone at the moment being locked indoors for so long. I obviously just got a call off a friend asking to go around to his and I stupidly agreed to do so.
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"I don’t want anyone to make the same mistake that I did, so I obviously urge everyone to stay at home and follow the rules and the guidelines of what we’ve been asked to do. I know for a fact that I’ll be doing that in the near future now and I urge everyone to do the same," added Grealish.
"I hope everyone can accept my apology and we can move on from this. Hopefully obviously in the near future we can all be out enjoying ourselves again once this has all boiled over."
Almost two months on, Agbonlahor - who knows Grealish well - believes that the Villa captain can make it up to fans as a matter of being himself.
"Knowing Jack, he'll know he made a big mistake," said Agbonlahor in an interview with Sky Sports.
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"I think he just thought to himself 'I could pop round' and see a friend.
"He knows deep down. He knows he's done wrong. He's been punished now and I think it's something that we should stop talking about and move on."
"He's apologised, he'll be doing something to try and help now and he'll have been the first one to take a wage cut.
"He's a very generous guy."