The international break is now upon us. The action-packed excitement of the Premier League season makes way for the misery of watching England coast past Bulgaria as talkSPORT has to make do with hosting shows centred entirely around the discussion of “who is England’s best right-back?” because, let’s be honest, international breaks don’t offer up much else to talk about.

Amongst City fans, however, the first four games have brought up the subject of the relative (okay, almost complete) absence of a certain “Stopfordian”. When David Silva announced this year would be his last at Manchester City, there was a lot of crying alone in cold showers whilst I insisted to anybody who dared to ask what was wrong that I was absolutely fine. Yet despite this, there was a sense of the baton being passed on. The old making way for the new. Step forward, Phil Foden.

Many City fans’ first glimpse of Foden, as mine was, was probably the pre-season game against Manchester United at the start of the 2017/18 season, in which he comfortably ran rings around the likes of Ander Herrera and, despite being only 17 years old at the time, looked incredibly mature. Those who follow the academy closely will have known this was coming for some time as the trio of Foden, Brahim Diaz and Jadon Sancho were being hyped up as they rose through the ranks, culminating in a season in the U21s team in which Foden and Sancho, 17 and 16 years old respectively, dominated the majority of games in which they featured.

Of course, of those three players, Foden is the only one who remains. Whilst Sancho decided that he wanted guaranteed first team football, and flew to Germany to prove to the entire world that his decision was absolutely the correct one for himself, whilst Brahim decided that Real Madrid offered better chances of first team football than Manchester City (they haven’t), Foden decided that City was where he saw his future. The decision to stay and to sign a deal tying him to the club until 2024 with the midfield talent ahead of him, especially considering the media noise surrounding the chances of youngsters breaking into City’s team, is a brave one.



The Stockport Iniesta

It helps that Foden is a blue. Having joined the club at the age of eight and having been a City fan up until that point, born and raised in Stockport, he has an affinity for the club which few others before him have possessed. He wants to break into the team, and being a fan of the club may give him patience where his counterparts would have none.

So, back to this season. We find ourselves five games in and we’ve seen Phil Foden play a total of 11 minutes. He got himself a 10 minute cameo at the end of the West Ham game we were already comfortably 3-0 up in, and a solitary minute at the end of City’s Carabao Cup win (though he did take a penalty in the shootout). Last weekend when City were 3-0 up against Brighton with 20 minutes to play, Ilkay Gundogan was preferred to replace Kevin De Bruyne. Another 10 minutes later, Bernardo Silva took David Silva’s place and another weekend with no sight of Foden was secured.

This would not be an issue for some blues were it not for just how at odds this involvement is with the praise heaped on him by Guardiola whenever he is asked to comment on Phil. At the start of this summer’s pre-season tour, he said the below in a press conference: “I have said many times in press conferences, but maybe not said it in front of him, Phil is the most, most, most talented player I have ever seen in my career as a manager.”

Now, we all know that Pep loves a bit of hyperbole, particularly when it comes to talking about his players and their performances. He’s an emotional man – often the passion of the moment can take over him and he says things which are a bit over the top. However, this isn’t an irregular occurrence for Pep when it comes to Foden. In April, he said the following: “I see many players as a manager – so many – and this guy has something that is so hard to find. He is special.”

And in December 2018, he said: “I would never have doubts about the quality of the guy – not just with the ball. He looks skinny, not strong, but he’s really, really strong. He’s an outstanding young player. I think England has a diamond.”

There’s plenty more where this came from going back some years but you get the idea – Guardiola thinks he’s good. This is not new information.

Despite Pep’s willingness to hype up his own players whenever given the opportunity to, and therefore the unsurprising nature of the praise being heaped on Foden, it does irritate fans to hear one thing in press conferences and see the opposite on the pitch. There are ways and means of complimenting Foden without calling him the most prodigious talent you’ve ever seen in your life, a life which has seen you coach Andres Iniesta, Xavi and Lionel Messi. If you put one of your players on a pedestal higher than players of that calibre and then don’t play them, the words become have less impact and, most frustratingly of all, you create a rod for your own back and the media will happily oblige.

The frustration of City fans is a pretty simple one – Phil is one of our own. Khaldoon Al Mubarak has been championing the academy ever since the CFA was built, once saying he would like to see “the maximum number of first team players coming out of the academy,” and when asked if the ambition was to have half of a team of home grown talent, he answered “yes”. For a long time we’ve been teased with the nearly-men – Lopes, Maffeo, Adarabioyo, Brahim – and now we have a bona fide Guardiola-approved talent who was born about ten miles down the road from the Etihad. Of course fans want to see him regularly on the pitch – who wouldn’t?

So here we are, five games into the season with only 11 minutes played. But what should we expect, realistically?