The 28-year-old fell out of favour under manager Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and after a failed loan move to West Ham United now finds himself under Blues manager Kieran McKenna, who looks to be key to reviving his career.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Phillips opened up about his move to Ipswich and how he wanted to get out of the media spotlight that a club like City brings so he could return to concentrating on his fitness and returning to his old self.
“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.
“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.
He admits that McKenna has been a huge help to him on and off the pitch, especially with the mental side of the game which is often overlooked when looking at a player who is struggling on the pitch.
“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.”
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