Rumour Mongering: Liverpool Could Save Phillips from Man City Purgatory

Photo by Jan Kruger - The FA/The FA via Getty Images

Kalvin Phillips is the latest English player bought by Manchester City to sit on the bench and meet homegrown quotas.

Ever since Manchester City became the sportswashing front for a human rights abusing petrostate, the richest spenders in England has made a habit of buying up English talent to mostly sit on the bench and meet the homegrown squad quota.

Kalvin Phillips is the latest such player, an England international who signed from Leeds for £45M in 2022 to some raised eyebrows given the general consensus was that as good as he was, he wasn’t quite good enough to ever be a regular starter for City.

Sure enough, he hasn’t been. He went from nailed-on starter to bit-part bench player, the sort of talent who could likely start for two-thirds of the sides in the Premier League but isn’t good enough to start in Pep Guardiola’s Billion Pound squad.

Ever since, there have been whispers Liverpool might be happy to save him from his playing time purgatory, and again we have such a story this week, with Sky Germany saying City are ready to sell Phillips in January and Liverpool could be interested.

That could in the original German report—which is presented speculatively and likely based on past rumoured interest—means the blame for this becoming a story is mostly down to the English outlets that have picked up on it over the past 24 hours.

There’s no suggesting Liverpool actually are interested in the player, and given the Reds’ aspirations are to compete with City, the main appeal to them for a homegrown player not quite good enough for City would be that he’s, well, homegrown.

Liverpool, meanwhile, may lack for defensive specialists in midfield at the moment but manager Jürgen Klopp does have plenty of other options and, homegrown or not, seemingly little room for any mid-season additions at the position.