Weight row, chaos comment, transfer snub - Why it all went wrong for Kalvin Phillips
Kalvin Phillips has secured a move away from Manchester City this summer, with Pep Guardiola leaving the door open for an unlikely return next summer.
It's not often that Manchester City and Pep Guardiola get it wrong. Yet two years on and it's fair to say that they made a mistake signing Kalvin Phillips.
Arriving as a European Championship finalist, an England Player of the Year and a sought-after £42m man, Phillips was hardly doomed to fail from the start. Leeds might have played a different style to City, however it was a Leeds side coached by Marcelo Bielsa - a manager Guardiola modelled his tactics on.
The list of setbacks in 24 months is a long one, though. Ill-timed injuries, a rush to make the England World Cup squad in 2022, Guardiola's public comments that Phillips returned from Qatar unfit. That particular episode upset Phillips and his family to the point that he went public with his unhappiness, prompting a genuine apology from Guardiola. The pair have not really recovered.
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Phillips turned down a move away last summer, insisting he wasn't going to give up on his City career after one season. He pointed to Joao Cancelo, Bernardo Silva and even Rodri as players who took a season to adapt to Guardiola's demands. More injuries stalled his progress, though, and then when his opportunity did come, he couldn't take it.
Phillips declared three games in the Autumn with Rodri suspended as the biggest week of his career, he'd been waiting for a chance to prove himself right. This was it.
He started one game, was a second half substitute in the next, and didn't feature in the final game against Arsenal. There was no way back and a loan to West Ham followed in January. Unfit, Phillips followed blunder with blunder in ten calamitous games for David Moyes' side.
Like Guardiola, Moyes couldn't fault Phillips' attitude or personality. But his quality didn't match and Phillips was at a crossroads this summer.
It didn't help that Guardiola was inadvertently bolting the door shut for Phillips to succeed at the Etihad. In trying to praise his number four, he said Phillips struggled in games where calm was needed but was better in the 'chaos' situations. Guardiola has spent his career doing everything to avoid chaos and covet control.
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And even when Phillips looked comfortable at centre-back this summer (albeit after two awful midfield outings), the boss said he was much better when the game is in front of him, rather than all around him - where a defensive midfielder needs to be. Without saying it, Guardiola condemned Phillips to obscurity by praising him as a better centre-back than midfielder.
Still, Guardiola won't close the door on a return for a player with four years left on his contract. "Absolutely," he replied when asked if he could yet resurrect his Blues career.
"He has to have minutes. He has to recover game time, play, play, play," explained Guardiola ahead of Phillips' move to Ipswich. "We thought that maybe he would not have the minutes he deserve to be. That's why it's better to have minutes and the chance maybe in the future to come back here. It is what it is."
Guardiola has to say that, though. He can hardly say someone contracted until 2028 is finished. Guardiola might not even be here next year. The chances of Phillips actually playing a competitive game for City again seem minuscule.
Phillips says he wants to 'enjoy football again'. He has been waiting for the chance of a fresh start for weeks - tellingly a timeframe that includes pre-season. Phillips declined the chance to speak to the media on tour, as is his right, and his brief comments as a new Ipswich player possibly point to why.
It's no surprise he wants to enjoy this again after becoming shorthand for a gaffe-prone player on an unstoppable slide. He will hope Ipswich will give him the platform to get the minutes Guardiola says he deserves and prove a few people wrong.
He will certainly be in the thick of the chaos in a relegation scrap.