Manchester City have seen multiple players join and leave the club since Pep Guardiola took charge of the club.
Having been at the Etihad Stadium since 2016, the City manager has used 90 players in total across the 482 games he’s overlooked in all competitions.
Over the past eight years, City have signed a plethora of players and moved others out either on permanent deals or temporary loans.
With Guardiola’s side now on the hunt to win a fifth consecutive Premier League trophy, as well as any other silverware they can get their hands on, one player who waved goodbye to the club during the previous summer transfer window has now opened up about his latest move.
- Who is Kalvin Phillips? Get to know the midfielder who could leave Man City in the transfer window
Kalvin Phillips shares why he wanted to leave Man City in the summer
Appearing as a special guest in a recent edition of My Mate’s A Footballer alongside regular hosts Patrick Bamford and comedian Joe Wilkinson, Kalvin Phillips had this to say about why he wanted to leave City to join Ipswich Town in the summer.
He said: “I think the main reason I came to Ipswich was just, my main ambition was just to get back playing football.
“I think just week in, week out and make sure that I’m fit again, and I’m not getting many injuries, which, me and Pat, as of the last two years, we’ve had that quite a lot.
“And I think, yeah, just back to enjoying my football, because obviously I loved it at City. They’re the best team in the world. They’ve got amazing players and amazing people there.
“It’s just kind of draining when you know that you’re not going to play on the weekend and you’ve still got to go in and train as well as you can, and hopefully keep on trying to make yourself better and better every day.
“With nothing to look forward to on the weekend, it’s really hard and I just got to a point where I knew that I probably wasn’t going to play much because of the players that play in front of me, which I can’t really argue about that.
“I kind of just made that decision that I wanted to just enjoy my football again and play football, not stress-free, but with less stress and fewer eyes on me, maybe.
“Because when I went to West Ham, I felt like there’s quite a lot of eyes on me because it was my first long move since moving to City.
“And then obviously it didn’t work out well. So I got quite a bit of stick as well, which you can handle well sometimes and sometimes you can go the other way and not handle it so well.”
How has Phillips fared at Ipswich so far?
Signed from Leeds United for £45m during the 2022 summer transfer window, Phillips has made just 31 appearances for City over his first two seasons at the club.
Having also spent the second half of the previous campaign on loan at West Ham, the Englishman then joined Ipswich on a season-long loan deal back in June.
Back in September, Paul Merson claimed that Phillips initially looked like his confidence was low as a result of his periods with City and West Ham.
Since joining Kieran McKenna’s side, Phillips has appeared in four games, three in the Premier League and one in the Carabao Cup.
Despite not being one of the more prominent players in the side yet, the 29-year-old has still managed to rack up the second-highest number of blocks (7), the third-highest number of passes into the final third of the pitch (13) and the fourth-highest total of recoveries (16) in the Ipswich squad.
With the Englishman now sharing why he decided to join Ipswich, all parties will be hoping that Phillips can play regularly throughout the season and get his confidence back.
