After an exceptional 2023-24 campaign for Manchester City, Phil Foden’s career for both club and country looked like it was stagnating. Now, with a new role under Pep Guardiola, he’s potentially better than ever.
When Phil Foden picked up the ball on the edge of the box at Selhurst Park with a clear sight of goal in the 69th minute of last weekend’s meeting with Crystal Palace, the majority watching the game knew what to expect next.
After taking a touch to steady himself, Foden’s precise effort was too good for Dean Henderson’s outstretched arm and the 25-year-old scored for a fourth Premier League game in a row, equalling his best run in the competition. Only in January 2025 had Foden previously scored in four consecutive league appearances, and he has the chance to break his personal record in Saturday’s home clash against West Ham United.
With seven goals and two assists, he’s already been involved in as many Premier League goals for Manchester City this season (9) as he was last season, despite playing half the number of matches (14 vs 28). In all competitions, Foden has already surpassed last season’s total of 15 goal involvements in 20 games fewer thanks to his 13 goals and five assists in 2025-26 (18).
His goal in City’s 3-0 win over Palace on Matchday 16 was very Foden-esque. It was his 12th goal from outside the box in his Premier League career, and his eighth since the start of 2023-24. In that time, no player has more goals from outside the box, while only Kylian Mbappé (18) has more in all competitions than him (13) among all players at clubs in the top five European leagues.
Despite yet another goal, City manager Pep Guardiola still found room to be critical of Foden’s overall performance in the win over Palace.
“Today he didn’t do a good game, he didn’t play good. He lost a lot of balls, so in a rush in every action. Phil has to be more tempo, more calm, keep the ball, pass – and in the right moment, change gear. In the right moment, make the explosion,” said the Spanish boss in his post-match interview with BBC’s Match of the Day.
Criticism from one of the game’s most well-known perfectionists is hardly news, but it does go along with the narrative that whatever Foden does, it’ll never seem enough for some.
Undoubtedly one of English football’s most exciting talents, Foden already has 98 goal involvements across his Premier League career (68 goals, 30 assists). With five months until his 26th birthday at the end of May 2026, there’s little doubt that he’ll become just the 20th different player to achieve a century of goal involvements in the competition before reaching 26.
Sixty-one of those goal contributions have come across the last four seasons, which places him a very respectable eighth in the Premier League rankings in that time. When looking at his numbers on a minutes-per-goal-involvement basis however, he ranks fifth out of the 14 players to have been involved in at least 50 Premier League goals since 2022-23 (125 mins), slightly more frequent than Bukayo Saka (126 mins).
Foden seems to be hitting his stride at the perfect time, too, not just for Man City, but potentially England as well.
Six months ago, not many would have picked Foden to make it into England’s 2026 FIFA World Cup squad ahead of the many talented players able to play off Harry Kane, either centrally or wide. But now, after four months of great form at club level compared to some of his rivals, he might just be fighting back.
But club form doesn’t always translate to international tournaments, working with different players and a coach other than Guardiola. Foden knows that first-hand.
Twelve Months of Struggle
Ahead of Euro 2024, Foden enjoyed his best season of club football at City, with career-high goal (19) and assist (8) tallies in the Premier League and a sensational 39 goal involvements in 53 appearances in all competitions – 13 more than he’d managed in any of his previous six seasons as a professional at the club. He was their standout star on the way to a record-breaking fourth successive Premier League title and won the Premier League Player of the Season, FWA Footballer of the Year and PFA Players’ Player of the Year awards.
The expectation was that Foden would follow this up by playing a key role in England trying to win their first major men’s trophy since the 1966 World Cup, but despite starting all seven of their matches at the Euros and playing 86% of possible minutes, he failed to have an impact for Gareth Southgate’s side.
To sum up Foden’s ineffectual displays at the tournament, he made as many passes to goalkeeper Jordan Pickford as he did to Kane (5) in seven matches. He didn’t post a single goal or assist despite attempting the second most shots (13) and tallying the third most chances created (6) for England at the finals. In fact, only France’s Ousmane Dembélé (22) totalled more shot involvements without a goal or assist than Foden (19) at Euro 2024.
While Dembélé used that as fuel to power him to a sensational Ballon d’Or-winning campaign in 2024-25, Foden struggled at club level the season after his forgettable European Championship performances.
It’s no coincidence that City failed to keep their title-winning run going for a fifth consecutive season in a campaign in which Foden suffered personally. Injuries, illness and off-field issues saw him miss 12 of City’s 57 competitive games last season before the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. He played just 2,844 minutes, only ranking ninth in the City squad for time on the pitch, after racking up the second most minutes for the club in 2023-24 (4,270).
City were affected by the long-term injury that kept the influential Rodri out for nearly all of the season, and ended up 13 points off eventual champions Liverpool. They even finished behind Arsenal after four years of dominance in the Premier League.
A woeful run of form between November and early March saw Man City lose nine of 19 Premier League matches, and unfortunately for Foden, he started all nine defeats. His attachment to City’s poor form was further strengthened by the fact that they won nine of the 10 league matches he played no part in last season (D1). To some outsiders, it looked like Foden was part of the problem.
Central to City’s Return to Form
In 2025-26, Foden has been deployed in a deeper position than we’ve been used to seeing him previously under Guardiola.
On the left side of a midfield three in a 4-3-3 formation, Foden’s role has allowed him to find more of the ball and play a bigger part in building City’s attacks rather than solely creating or scoring them. Across all competitions, 77% of his playing time has been spent deeper in central midfield. Last season, he played just 24% of playing time in that role, and it was less than 10% in each of the three previous campaigns.
Foden’s role at City has gone full circle. This was his position in his breakthrough season in 2018-19, when he played all his 1,112 minutes in all competitions in a number 8 role in a 4-3-3 as City won the domestic treble. As Guardiola himself stated last month: “This season is the Phil we met a long, long time ago.”
Playing deeper means we’re seeing Foden receive the ball much more inside his own half, trusted to play more of a facilitator role in the build-up to attacks.
Excluding 2017-18 and 2018-19, when he played just 45 minutes and 329 minutes of Premier League football respectively, Foden is averaging the second-highest number of successful passes per 90 in a Premier League season (46.2), behind only his exceptional 2023-24 campaign (46.7). His average of 17.5 successful passes inside his own half per 90 is the highest ever in a season, while he’s completing just 13.7 per 90 ending in the final third – by far his lowest average in a Premier League campaign, five fewer per 90 than last season and seven fewer per 90 than in 2023-24.
This season has seen him have 33.9% of his touches in the defensive half – his highest proportion ever in a season and much higher than last season (20.8%) and his most impressive campaign in 2023-24 (22.2%). In fact, he’s already had more touches of the ball in the defensive half this season (301) than last season (253) despite playing 642 minutes fewer.
Although quite obviously adept at carrying the ball, it’s no longer as important for Foden to do so for City – they’ve got other players to do that. His per-90 averages for carries (11.1), carry distance (104.6m), progressive carries (4.9) and progressive carry distance (44.5m) are all career lows for him in the Premier League this season.
Foden is playing fewer progressive passes – completed open-play passes in the attacking two-thirds of the pitch that move the ball at least 25% closer to the goal – on average than ever before in a Premier League season (2.3) too, but the average distance of those passes (18.3m) is three metres further than in any previous league campaign.
His average of 3.6 long balls per 90 in open play is 1.0 higher than in any of his previous Premier League seasons too, with City’s willingness to play more direct in 2025-26 a big factor in this. Foden’s passing range is brilliant, so why not use it to get in behind opposition defences from deeper positions?
This is a different City side to what we’ve grown used to seeing under Guardiola. No longer do they completely rely on suffocating opponents with extreme amounts of possession, but they have begun to utilise the pace of players like Jérémy Doku, Rayan Cherki and Erling Haaland on the counter.
They’ve averaged the lowest possession (57.4%) and fewest open-play sequences of 10+ passes (483) than ever before in a season since Guardiola took over in 2016-17, while they are averaging twice as many shots from fast breaks per game (1.3) than in any previous campaign under him.
Finding Pockets of Space
“He’s one of the best players we have in small spaces in the final third, by far,” Guardiola claimed in early October. “In terms of assists and in terms of goals in small spaces, how he times an attack and the desire to score a goal is the best we have.”
Playing deeper on the pitch doesn’t seem to have had too much of an effect on Foden’s ability to get on the end of attacks and score goals. As we’ve already mentioned, he’s equalled last season’s tally of Premier League goals (7) before we’ve reached Christmas, but not only that, he’s making runs into the penalty area to open up strong scoring opportunities.
Foden’s phenomenal engine helps. No player to have played at least 800 minutes of Premier League action this season has covered as much ground as he has (12.3km per 90) and only Matheus Nunes (19.5) and Nico O’Reilly (18.5) average more sprints per 90 among Man City players than Foden (18.2).
Despite averaging fewer touches in the opposition box than ever before in a league season (3.5), Foden is averaging better quality shots this season (0.124 xG per shot) than in both 2024-25 (0.096) and his excellent 2023-24 campaign (0.099). That goes some way to explaining why his goal tally is still impressive despite being deployed deeper by Guardiola, with Foden’s incredible work-rate enabling him to find pockets of space with late runs into the box to support the attack.
His ability to work in tight spaces also means he can have an impact for City despite being under constant pressure from opponents. Foden is someone who plays consistently on the half-turn in midfield, with complete awareness and unprincipled control.
Of midfielders and forwards to have attempted at least 500 passes this season in the Premier League, only Liverpool’s Curtis Jones (89.4%) and Chelsea’s Moisés Caicedo (87.0%) have a higher pass completion rate when under high pressure from opponents than Foden (86.8%). Opponents know the threat that Foden poses, too – no Man City player has had to make a higher proportion of their passes under high pressure than Foden (57.7%) in 2025-26.
World Cup Hopes
Foden will undoubtedly play a key role in City’s attempts to chase down Arsenal and beat them to the Premier League title in the second half of the season, but it’d be naïve to think he won’t have an eye on impressing Thomas Tuchel enough to work his way back into the England fold.
His call-up to the squad for the November World Cup qualifying dead rubbers against Albania and Serbia saw him return after missing Tuchel’s three previous squads in June, September and October.
The fact remains that Foden has played just 150 of a possible 990 minutes under Tuchel since the German’s first game in charge in March, and he had to settle for two appearances off the bench, accumulating only 53 minutes, across the two November qualifiers where England had nothing to play for. He played more minutes in the knockout stages of Euro 2024 (374) than he has in the Three Lions’ 16 internationals since (232 of a possible 1,440).
But tournament football also requires players who can display versatility. England will only be able to pick 26 players for the World Cup next summer, and Foden has shown that he’s adept in multiple positions across midfield – something that arguably isn’t the case for many of his rivals in those spots, such as Morgan Rogers, Jarrod Bowen, Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke and Anthony Gordon, stars who have played more minutes under Tuchel than Foden, with the exception of Palmer, who’s spent time out injured in 2025-26.
Should Foden keep up his form for Manchester City for the rest of the season, his obvious quality and improved form might prove too much for Tuchel to ignore.
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