Manchester City have not had the best of starts to the new Premier League season and a U-turn Pep Guardiola has made suggests he is now desperate.
The Citizens have lost two of their three games so far this season and they are also nursing a number of injuries, though the situation has eased somewhat.
And while Manchester City had a busy summer on the transfer front, several notable issues in the City squad were not addressed in the market.
This has resulted in Pep Guardiola having to get creative with his squad, as can be seen in Man City’s 25-man squad for the first half of the season.
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Kalvin Phillips collects a medal after the FIFA Club World Cup Saudi Arabia 2023 final match between Manchester City and Fluminense.
Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images
Manchester City name Kalvin Phillips in 25-man Premier League squad
On Friday, reports did the rounds claiming Kalvin Phillips was going to be named in City’s squad, and that proved to be the case.
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Phillips has not played competitively for City since December 2023, when he got minutes off the bench in the Club World Cup semi-final win over Urawa Red Diamonds.
Since then, he has embarked on two loan spells – he spent the second half of 2023/24 at West Ham United and the 2024/25 campaign at Ipswich Town.
Neither team wanted to sign Phillips permanently, and so he returned to City at the end of last season.
Phillips also spent the summer recovering from injury, having undergone Achilles surgery in May – which meant few clubs will have wanted to take a chance on him.
However, actually including Phillips in the 25-man squad is not something that City would have done in the past with a player who has been frozen out for nearly two years.
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Why Manchester City may have given Kalvin Phillips a lifeline at the club
Admittedly, Phillips does tick the homegrown box, which is a requirement for all Premier League squads.
Premier League rules state that each squad must contain no more than 17 players who do not fulfil the ‘Home Grown Player’ (HGP) criteria.
The rest of the squad, up to a total of 25 players, must be ‘Home Grown’.
In addition, City could do with further cover at No. 6, so they might as well make use of Phillips while he’s at the club.
City fans have even been suggesting that Phillips could cover at right-back and centre-back, two more areas that could do with reinforcing.
Perhaps Phillips has really been impressing in training, prompting Pep Guardiola to give him a lifeline.
Nevertheless, you can’t help but feel that City are doing this as a kind of last resort and that, had their squad planning been a bit better, they wouldn’t have resorted to this.
In addition, Man City have included academy graduate Ben Mbete in their 25-man squad – arguably a more surprising inclusion than Phillips.