With 76 minutes gone at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday night, Phil Foden was culpable for what might prove the title race’s defining moment. With Manchester City leading Nottingham Forest 2-1, Foden lost Elliot Anderson, who ran off him and curled home a 20-yard equaliser. Sixty seconds later, Pep Guardiola substituted his England playmaker.
As Morgan Gibbs-White’s first equaliser could also be traced back to a loose Foden touch, this was a miserable evening for him: City managed only a draw, and as Arsenal won at Brighton, the title race tilted the Gunners’ way.
This is the latest evidence of Foden’s form flatlining precisely when City need him for the business end of the campaign. Guardiola’s side is not the sleek winning machine of the 2022-23 treble, nor the following term’s record-breaking iteration that claimed a fourth consecutive title, but they are still chasing a historic quadruple.
On Saturday night City are at Newcastle in the FA Cup fifth round. In the Champions League they are in Spain on Wednesday to play Real Madrid in the first leg of their last 16 tie. On 22 March they play the Carabao Cup final at Wembley against Arsenal. And, despite dropping the draw against Forest, hope remains of overhauling the seven-point deficit in the Premier League to Mikel Arteta’s team, who have played a game more.
Foden, though, is peripheral. A shadow of the swashbuckling playmaker he can be, his inclusion in the XI on Wednesday was a surprise. Guardiola had benched him for the previous two league games and it was only his second start in the past seven Premier League matches.
When asked about him on Friday, the City manager defended his player. “Step by step, he will be back,” Guardiola said. “We had some very good things in the last game. His dynamics are still there – it gave two good openings for Erling [Haaland] to shoot.
“That is what we want from Phil. Have the courage to be incredibly free in his mind and his soul to express his incredible talent in the final third. Get the ball, turn and go, turn and go. Step by step, he will get it.”
After last season’s disappointing output, Guardiola was enthused by a close season in which Foden scored three goals in four Club World Cup games, including a box-office 100th in City colours, 104 minutes into the last-16 tie against Al-Hilal in Orlando.
Foden sprinted along the left while eyeing a Rayan Cherki chip over the defence, which he met with a sweet volley from an acute angle that made it 3-3. City were eventually knocked out 4-3 in a thrilling tie, but Foden seemed to have asserted himself as the man who would fill the void left by Kevin De Bruyne’s departure earlier in the summer.
This has not materialised. After a slow start this season, Foden enjoyed a purple patch of eight goals in nine games, from a double in the 4-1 win over Borussia Dortmund on 5 November, to the third in the 3-0 win at Crystal Palace on 14 December. Since then, there have been zero goals in 17 appearances and he is no longer a shoo-in for a seat on England’s World Cup plane. With Foden still to agree a new contract – his current terms end in June 2027 – he is at an intriguing juncture of a garlanded career.
Since his Premier League debut as a substitute in a 4-1 win over Tottenham in December 2017, Foden has been billed as the future, then present, of Guardiola’s City – the local lad who broke into the City team at 17 and would star for a decade or more as their creative force.
Nine seasons later and the boy from Stockport has a glittering CV: six Premier League titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups, one Champions League, one Super Cup and one Club World Cup.
When City won the record fourth consecutive championship two years ago, Foden’s campaign featured 19 goals and eight assists in 35 league games, as he was voted Footballer of the Year by the Professional Footballers’ Association and the Football Writers’ Association. In the final-day, title-clinching 3-1 victory over West Ham at the Etihad, Foden was the difference – scoring two early goals to settle nerves.
Yet his 2024-25 league return, partly affected by injury, was a plunge in form: 20 starts, seven goals and two assists. A Casemiro tackle in April’s goalless draw at Manchester United forced him off with an injured ankle, and when returning he played with pain.
After Guardiola allowed him only 14 minutes as a substitute in the 1-0 FA Cup final defeat by Crystal Palace, Foden revealed other issues. “I’ve had a lot of things going on off the pitch, mentally. Sometimes there’s things in life bigger than football,” he said. “This season I’ve struggled a bit. I’ve had a lot of ankle pain and played with it in the last couple of months.”
The struggle continues. But he still has Guardiola in his corner. Asked about Foden losing Anderson on Wednesday, the manager said: “It was not a problem just with Phil. There were four mistakes in the move. He played well. But still, we are used to him being incredibly decisive in the final third. This type of player, the big talents have to express themselves in the moment. He’ll be back.”
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