Blues on-loan Manchester City midfielder Kalvin Phillips says his move to Portman Road has “lifted a weight” following his struggles over the last couple of seasons.
Phillips joined Town for 2024/25 in the summer after a frustrating two seasons after his £45 million move from Leeds in the summer of 2022, making only two league starts and 14 sub appearances for the Premier League champions, then spending the second half of last season on loan at West Ham where he started only three top-flight matches in addition to playing five games from the bench.
As a result, the 31-times-capped England international missed out on a place in the Euro 2024 squad.
The 28-year-old says moving to Town was a conscious move to stay more out of the spotlight as he rebuilt his career.
"I knew a lot about the club, and it was a decision I wanted to make to get out of the eye line of the media so much and focus on playing football, focus on my family as well,” he told Sky Sports.
"At City, you can train with the best players every single day but if you're not playing football every day, it's difficult to stay fit, it's difficult to stay confident.
"When there are times you're feeling like you could play and the manager decides to go down a different route, it does hurt a little bit. The more I wasn't playing, the less confident I got, the less fit I got.
"I just wanted to get that feeling back. I felt like I lost some fire in my belly to compete sometimes, but ever since I've been here, and even in pre-season when I played a lot of minutes I got that fire back, and made the decision to come here to play football and get back doing enjoying what I do.
"It has a similar feeling here to the season at Leeds when we got promoted. We're different in what we do, we're very intense and for me it's about enjoying the season and for the lads, too.”
Regarding having the media focus on him during his difficult times when he came under fire from fans and pundits alike, he added: "For everyone, it affects you. If you read it it’s going to have an impact. I'm quite thick-skinned anyway, someone can say something to me and I'll laugh it off.
"But when you're not playing and people are making negative comments, it's hard to show people what you're capable of. That's one thing I did struggle with.
"It's amazing to say I'm part of a treble-winning team, I've won the league twice. But when you're not involved as much as you'd like to be, it doesn't feel the same. It was an amazing time and moment, but I feel like had I played more, got more of a chance, it would have felt more special.”
He says the move to Suffolk has "lifted a weight” and has enjoyed working with manager Kieran McKenna.
"The manager's helped me in certain situations, which has helped me go out and enjoy every day and every game,” he added.
"I get quite frustrated with myself at certain times, especially in training. I'm quite hot-headed and Kieran's told me from the first day, don't worry about it. It's part of football, it's a game of mistakes.
"As long as you can deal with certain mistakes better than others, that's fine. He's pushed me to be less hard on myself - my head might go for 10 minutes in a session and I'd lose more than gain anything doing that.
"I've thought about speaking to people, psychologists, and I've been a person who's not really wanted to do that. But Kieran spoke to me about it, and I'm just about to speak to someone and see if they can shed any light on why I'm doing it.”
Phillips has made eight appearances for the Blues with injuries and the harsh red card against Leicester having hampered his availability, however, he has shown signs of getting back to his old form.
Ultimately, he hopes to return to the Three Lions fold: "For me personally, being back with England would be one of my main objectives. Obviously I want to play as many games as I can anyway, but it would be a great feeling after missing the Euros.
"I was devastated about that, but I could understand it. It's a good goal to get back there.”