Pep Guardiola opted to leave Phil Foden among the substitutes for Manchester City\u2019s meeting with Liverpool after saying he would \u201cprotect\u201d his out-of-form playmaker. The decision came despite a striking run from the 25-year-old earlier in the campaign.<\/p>\n
Foden produced six goals in four Premier League appearances as November bled into December, one shy of his tally from the entirety of last season. That scoring run has since halted; he has not registered a goal or an assist in any competition since Dec. 14.<\/p>\n
The player\u2019s loss of form coincided with a difficult spell for City that included a 2\u20130 defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford. Guardiola substituted Foden at half time in that fixture, and he has not started a Premier League match since.<\/p>\n
Foden has not been relegated exclusively to the bench during that period. He started the Champions League defeat to Bod\u00f8\/Glimt and featured in the Carabao Cup semi-final victory over Newcastle United, although he was largely anonymous in the latter.<\/p>\n
Guardiola defended his approach ahead of the trip to Anfield and insisted he was protecting the player as he looks to restore his best level. \u201cStep by step he will be back. He\u2019s my son. He\u2019s our son,\u201d the manager told assembled media.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to protect him and get him back to his best. We need his best to come back where we are. He\u2019s a human being. Eight or nine years careers, sometimes you have ups and downs. It\u2019s simple as that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to be the one that doubts the quality of Phil and how important he is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manchester City\u2019s starting XI for the match was listed as follows:<\/p>\n
(4-3-3): Gianluigi Donnarumma; Matheus Nunes, Abdukodir Khusanov, Marc Gu\u00e9hi, Rayan A\u00eft-Nouri; Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Nico O\u2019Reilly; Antoine Semenyo, Erling Haaland, Omar Marmoush.<\/p>\n
Substitutes: James Trafford (GK), R\u00faben Dias, Tijjani Reijnders, Nathan Ak\u00e9, Rayan Cherki, Nico Gonz\u00e1lez, Phil Foden, Max Alleyne, Rico Lewis<\/p>\n
Foden\u2019s place in the squad has long been contested. After outlasting the likes of David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay G\u00fcndogan, the left-footer now faces competition from another talented academy graduate as he seeks to regain form in the 2025\/26 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola benched Phil Foden for Liverpool after promising to protect him and rebuild confidence…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,1056],"tags":[1446,1305,1304],"class_list":["post-6639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-man-city","tag-academy","tag-bench-selection","tag-benching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}