Kalvin Phillips gives clear verdict on Pep Guardiola's 'overweight' comments during Man City nightmare

Kalvin Phillips has moved away from Manchester City to temporarily end a difficult spell at the champions and has headed to West Ham United in a bid to revitalise his career.

Holding midfielder Phillips moved to City in the summer of 2022 after he departed boyhood club Leeds United for an initial £42m transfer fee and headed to Pep Guardiola's outfit.

Phillips was, of course, part of a squad which won the Treble last season with the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League titles.

However, Phillips struggled to feature regularly for City last season despite the collective success, playing only 21 times and many of these appearances coming off the bench.

Phillips played 10 times this season for City and netted his first goal for the club, but in January opted to head out on loan to West Ham in a bid for more regular game time to aid his England squad chances ahead of this summer's European Championships.

After the winter World Cup in Qatar in 2022, Guardiola made a frank admission on Phillips's fitness and admitted he had arrived back at City 'overweight' in stark comments.

The midfielder - who has played twice for West Ham so far and could feature again against Arsenal this afternoon - has reflected on those comments Guardiola made.

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Phillips believes that Guardiola was right to highlight him being overweight, but felt he perhaps could have gone about it a different way than the frank path the City boss chose which ultimately impacted the midfielder's confidence.

The 28-year-old admits his family were not happy with the comments from the City boss, especially his mum, as he felt there was ultimately miscommunication over the issue.

Speaking to the Mirror, he said: "When Pep came out and said I was overweight, he was right to do so but there are different ways to go about it.

"I did not disagree with him but obviously it took a big knock on my confidence and how I felt at City I would probably say that.

"And my family were not happy about it, either. Especially my mum.

"People can say overweight - overweight for some people is like 10kg. I was probably 1.5kg over my weight target.

"I think obviously Pep was frustrated that I didn't come back into training early but it was just miscommunication between the people that worked at City and myself.

"I got told to be back on a certain date and I was always going to go back earlier than that date anyway because I hadn't played that much for England during the tournament.

"I'd just recovered from my shoulder injury so Pep wanted me to come in the day after we finished the tournament so I could be involved in the friendlies. I never got that information because if he asked me to have been there, I would have been there."