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Demarai Gray will return to the King Power Stadium as a completely different player to the one that left in 2021.
Gray returned to Birmingham City in the summer and will go up against another one of his former clubs, Leicester City this week.
It was Leicester who signed him from Birmingham in January 2016 as the Foxes went on to win the Premier League, before the winger experienced the Champions League and Europa League campaigns.
In the end, the winger fell out of favour and was sold to Bayer Leverkusen in January 2021.
His last few months, by Gray’s own admission, were tough to deal with, but he will always have no regrets.
Demarai Gray reflected on his last six months at Leicester City
The move to Leverkusen was supposed to reignite his career but he was on the move again six months later, returning to England to join Everton.
He would find more stability there, spending two seasons on Merseyside, allowing him to reflect on his career, where he admitted that the final few months of his five-year spell at Leicester made him fall out of love with the sport.
Speaking in Everton’s match day programme in August 2021, he said: “It was very hard. Any time you go on the pitch and touch the ball, it is the way to keep going, because of your natural love of the game. But it got to the point where I lost the love for it.
“You have to find it in yourself to stay strong. If you go in and sulk it is a wasted day. But it is how you are feeling and coping at home. At the start, I didn’t cope well.
“I probably made the wrong decisions… but I don’t regret it, it is part of learning.
“If I am in that situation again, I have to focus on getting back in the team, not waste time making the wrong decisions.”
Demarai Gray enjoying Birmingham City return
It seems that Gray is already proving people wrong at Birmingham after his lively return to the club where it all began for him.
The 29-year-old has featured heavily under Chris Davies already and unlike last time, he is considered to be one of the more experienced members of the squad.
Crucially, Gray knows what it takes to win at the highest level and he will be reminded of his past achievements when he steps out onto the King Power Stadium pitch this weekend.