Forgotten Manchester City midfielder Kalvin Phillips will finish the season with Championship club Sheffield United, after completing a shock loan move on January Deadline Day.
Phillips made his first City appearance in almost two years in September when he featured for the final seven minutes of a Carabao Cup win over Huddersfield Town. But that has been the former England midfielder’s only game this season, having failed to resurrect his career during a spell at Ipswich Town in 2024–25 that was prematurely curtailed by injury.
Yet Phillips will now have the opportunity to begin playing again by dropping down a division. A loan, thought to include no option to buy has been set up with Sheffield United until the summer.
What Next for Kalvin Phillips?
Unfortunately for Phillips, signing with Manchester City has ruined his career. It was a dream move at the time, handpicked to join the then reigning Premier League champions, but he needed surgery on a shoulder injury just weeks into his first season and was irreparably set back.
He was still selected for the 2022 World Cup by Gareth Southgate, only to have Pep Guardiola publicly state that the player was “overweight” when he reported back to Manchester after the tournament, for which the manager did apologise. But his City career never recovered.
The long-term contract Phillips signed when he joined the club from Leeds in a £45 million ($61.4 million) deal in the summer of 2022 remarkably still has two more seasons left to go after this one and City cannot easily release him until 2028.
Part of the problem is that Phillips has a salary far higher than the level he has fallen to. No club in the Championship could come close to matching reported £150,000 weekly wages. It is his right to claim that—worth nearly £8 million per season—for his family’s long-term security, but it may be that City have to offer some sort of payout or compensation to mutually cancel his contract sooner.
It makes the move to Bramall Lane just a temporary fix, although it potentially puts the 30-year-old in the shop window to move permanently ahead of 2026–27.
After watching him struggle for three years, including difficult spells with West Ham United, Ipswich and then failing to land a new team for the first half of 2025–26, there is also little incentive for clubs to take a gamble on him, making this a hard cycle to break.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Man City’s Kalvin Phillips Completes Shock Loan.
