I loved my time at Man City despite Pep weight comments - but it was draining and I had to get out

"Obviously, I'd never expect myself to be down here, but yeah, it just happened," says a nonchalant Kalvin Phillips, opening up for the first time on his exit from Manchester City this summer.

Speaking in the relatively safe confines of his friend's podcast, Phillips discussed his ambitions on loan at Ipswich after two years at City which were hampered by injury, fitness concerns, lack of form and a disastrous loan to West Ham.

Phillips arrived from Leeds in 2022 for £42m as a possible alternative option to Rodri, but injuries at the start of that season put him in a race against time to make the England World Cup squad in December. When he returned, Pep Guardiola caused headlines when he left Phillips out of a team citing that the midfielder was overweight.

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Phillips has discussed the impact that the fall-out of those comments had on him and his family, prompting Guardiola to publicly apologise last year, but the former Leeds man is still impacted by the incident.

"You probably heard about the time when Pep came out and said that I was overweight after the World Cup and stuff," he told 'My Mate's a Footballer' with Patrick Bamford. "And I think that narrative on social media just kind of grew and grew. Every club that I'd go to, I spoke to, like the manager and the nutritionist and stuff like that, they'd always speak about weight before they'd say anything else. And it got to the point where it peed me off a little bit. I was getting quite frustrated with it."

Phillips spoke glowingly of Guardiola and his preparations for games - saying