I think Pep only will play him for a meaningful period if he is forced to, like Rodri off for 3 months, and at same time we have injuries in defence so Stones cannot be overused in midfield and also Foden injured and cannot be playing Kovacic deeper because of that...
these one off opportunites will do nothing for Phillips that are 20 mins as sub in a game where we are 3-0 up or a one of Carabao game vs Oldham. these are good for a 18 year old for a taste for first team footie, but not for him to claim his stake at a team like City.
we were lucky Rodri played as many games last year without injuries, but even if he had been off Phillips would still not got the nod. Gundo and Stones and Lewis etc would have been used before him.
this thing he wants to stay and prove himself, probably costing us a good fee this summer and himself an Euro spot maybe.
Pep is not messing around, if he was any good he would play lot more minutes. Less than 300 minutes last year in PL says it all. Started 2 PL games only, both when we already wrapped it up end of May. If it goes down the wire ad we need to win last two rounds he probably does not start a single game and plays 100 minutes of league football across 10 games as coming on from bench.
