It was easy, during his 18 fruitless months at Manchester City, to be seduced by the idea that Kalvin Phillips was a fine player and all he needed was to start playing again. And then he did start playing again and, having started the 3-1 win over Italy in October and been called up for the games against Malta and North Macedonia in November, he was left out of the squad Gareth Southgate announced on Thursday to face Brazil and Belgium.
“His form just hasn’t been good enough,” Southgate said, and that’s hard to deny. Three minutes into Phillips’s West Ham debut, against Bournemouth, his weak back-pass gifted Dominic Solanke a goal. Twelve minutes after coming off the bench for his second appearance, he was dispossessed, leading to a goal for Manchester United. Two games after that, he was sent off against Nottingham Forest when, five minutes after being booked for a needless shove, he committed a daft challenge on Morgan Gibbs-White.
It was excruciating. It got to the point where every second on the pitch was like a slasher horror, watching through your fingers as a likable character sneaks along a dark corridor in the empty school, knowing that at some point, the music will screech as a shadow crosses the screen and torchlight glints off an exposed blade. Even if there have been no calamitous mistakes this month, the statistics really aren’t good: 287 minutes played over eight games in which West Ham have scored three goals and conceded six. The 3-1 win at Everton is the only time the match situation has improved for West Ham in his time on the pitch.
And yet he is clearly an extremely talented footballer. What impressed most when he emerged at Leeds under Marcelo Bielsa wasn’t just his range of passing, but the speed with which he would play the pass. He seemingly had a preternatural capacity to assess the disposition of teammates and opponents on the pitch and then choose his option. He played every game for England at Euro 2020 and nobody thought it an aberration that he was named England men’s player of the year for 2020-21.
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Southgate was keen to talk up the possibility of a way back. “He just needs to find that rhythm and confidence. There’s a player in there, and I’m sure he’ll find that.” Phillips is only 28. There is still time and what is encouraging is that David Moyes also seems to believe that, giving him minutes at the end of every match to try to refamiliarise himself with the game. It’s obviously far from ideal to make only two league starts in 18 months at what should be the peak of your career, but players do come back from lean spells or poor transfers.
The question is more what went wrong at City. There has been no suggestion that Phillips was anything other than diligent and professional. Although Pep Guardiola did criticise him for returning overweight after the World Cup, he later apologised and Phillips has explained he missed his target by 1.5kg, largely because of an injury and breakdown in communication about exactly when he was expected back.
It has become habitual to praise City for their acuity in recruitment.
Football could handle owners with extraordinarily deep pockets because they tended to be megalomaniacs who understood celebrity better than the game. The model fell apart with City because they weren’t just rich but smart. They appointed the best coach in the world and built a club to his specifications. They signed exceptionally well. There were the occasional signings who didn’t quite work out – Danilo, Ferran Torres, Angeliño – but no real flops.
It took players time to settle and adapt to Guardiola’s methods and the assumption at first was that Phillips was one of them, not helped by the shoulder injury he suffered early on that required surgery. But gradually it became apparent that Guardiola saw no future for him. Signed for an initial £42m, Phillips’s only two league starts came in May last year when the title was wrapped up and players were being rested for the FA Cup and Champions League finals.
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So what had gone wrong? Even allowing for the fact that Phillips had suffered a slight decline in form towards the end of his final season at Leeds, why did City sign a player in whom Guardiola seemed to have so little faith? (It’s possible similar questions might be asked about Matheus Nunes, signed for an initial £53m last summer and seen only rarely, although even he has made six league starts; it’s also possible he may be undergoing some sort of reprogramming – with Guardiola in the first season it’s never easy to tell.)
It may be that Phillips proved unable to absorb Guardiola’s tactical instructions – although given he could handle Bielsa’s, that seems unlikely. It may be there was a personality clash with Guardiola but, while the manager has certainly fallen out with players before, his recent tone in discussing Phillips has tended to be of sadness rather than irritation. It seems rather that there was some sort of breakdown in the City model, that they signed a player their manager didn’t really want; from their point of view the only positive is that at least he wasn’t playing well for one of their rivals.
In that sense, Phillips seems an unfortunate victim of the cold economic reality of modern football. To force his way into England’s squad for the Euros would require a remarkable upturn in form, even though, as Southgate said, England “don’t have many players of that profile” and “a good version of him is an important player for us”. His ideal, perhaps, would be Phillips sitting deep, spraying passes around, releasing Declan Rice to drive on as he has recently for Arsenal alongside Jorginho.
For now, though, it’s almost like rehab after a lengthy injury. Before thinking of England, Phillips needs to get back playing regularly, needs to become comfortable on a pitch again, has to remember what it is to be a player. What he achieved under Leeds showed he has the ability; after a difficult 18 months, it’s a question of unlocking it again.
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