Alex Keble takes a look at the qualities Kalvin Phillips will bring to West Ham United.
Player analysis: Kalvin Phillips
West Ham are having a very, very good season – and are only a player or two away from it being an unforgettable one.
David Moyes’ side are five points behind Tottenham Hotspur in the potential fifth UEFA Champions League spot and have qualified for the last 16 of the UEFA Europa League, far exceeding expectations for a team supposedly weakened by Declan Rice’s departure and the demands of a Thursday-Sunday schedule.
Arguably all that West Ham need to challenge for those Champions League places is a Rice replacement, someone with the defensive clout and distribution to pull the strings from the base of midfield.
Phillips has endured a tough 18 months at Manchester City since his move from Leeds United. The 28-year-old has played only 380 Premier League minutes – 7.7 per cent of those available – and started just two matches.
He needs a reset, particularly with UEFA Euro 2024 looming large, and West Ham need a Rice-like figure who can also fill in for the injured Edson Alvarez.
Every which way you look at it, this is a perfect transfer. Here’s why.
"I'm here and ready to play" 👊
— West Ham United (@WestHam) January 26, 2024
Kalvin Phillips' first interview as a West Ham United player 🎙️
Phillips’ defensive work is Rice-esque
“He is aware of where the opponents are when he needs to recover the ball and he is also aware of where his team-mates are once he has recovered it," said then Leeds head coach Marcelo Bielsa of Phillips in 2021. "He knows how to assess danger and he takes good decisions on the pitch.
"He is good at knowing which threat he needs to neutralise as a priority at any given time.”
Given those defensive characteristics reeled off by Bielsa, it is easy to see why he adored Phillips.
In 2021/22, his last season at Leeds, Phillips was top of the Premier League for recoveries per 90 with 10.2 (min. five appearances) and in both of his top-flight campaigns, he averaged 4.4 tackles and interceptions per match, which is more than any West Ham player has averaged this season (Emerson tops their charts on 4.05).
But as Bielsa alludes to in the quotes above, a lot of Phillips’ work is anticipation, positioning and intelligence; traits that aren’t always highlighted in the numbers.
They are captured better in the team’s results with and without him. In 2021/22, Leeds conceded three or more goals in nine of the 14 Premier League matches Phillips missed with a hamstring injury between December and March.
Leeds fell apart without him, winning a single point in an eight-match stretch at their lowest ebb, but scraped together enough points to stay up after Phillips returned in April.
West Ham & Soucek need help in midfield
West Ham badly need these qualities. They have ridden their luck at times this season, conceding more shots in open play (253) and in total (355) than any other team bar bottom side Sheffield United.
What’s more, only Sheff Utd and Luton Town, with 42.7 Expected Goals Against (xGA) and 40.8 xGA respectively, have allowed a higher xGA against than West Ham’s 38.3.
Phillips, then, is just what’s needed to sweep up in midfield, stamping out danger before it develops into an opposition chance.
Currently, that job is all-too-often given to Tomas Soucek. Whenever Alvarez is out, Soucek is moved into a defensive role he struggles to fill – and that removes his goal threat from the final third.
West Ham’s two matches against Sheff Utd this season capture the problem neatly.
In the 2-0 win in September, Soucek was free to move higher up the pitch with Alvarez behind him, whereas in the 2-2 draw this month, Soucek had to cover the injured Alvarez in deeper areas.
Aside from the two points dropped, the difference was palpable. In the first meeting, 39 per cent of Soucek's 46 touches were in the opposition half, compared with 21 per cent of his 68 touches in the second, while Soucek had six shots in the 2-0 win – but none in the 2-2 draw.
Phillips, then, both improves West Ham’s overall defending and releases Soucek into his best position.
Phillips’ distribution perfect for Moyes’ counters
The standout feature of Phillips’ game is his raking long balls out to the flanks. In 2021/22 he made 32 switches of play, ranking him eighth overall in the Premier League. He also completed 220 long passes, putting him fifth among all midfielders.
That quality just wasn't required at Man City.
“We have our own specific way to play and he sometimes struggles in a few things, but the Leeds playing style was perfect for him,” Pep Guardiola once said. But it is a fantastic weapon for Moyes to have at West Ham.
The Hammers' reactive, counter-attacking system relies upon the ball being fed quickly out wide to the likes of Jarrod Bowen and Lucas Paqueta, and there is arguably no better player than Phillips at finding those diagonals when opportunities to break arise.
Guardiola once said that Phillips’ long balls were even better than Rodri’s. They are certainly better than any current West Ham player, as the stats show.
Phillips v West Ham midfielders
| Players | Long passes attempted/90 | Long passes completed/90 |
|---|---|---|
| Phillips 21/22 | 11.90 | 8.15 |
| Ward-Prowse 23/24 | 9.04 | 4.31 |
| Paqueta 23/24 | 5.95 | 3.45 |
Phillips often used that passing range to get Raphinha in behind, and that is precisely what we will see at West Ham.
He can be a catapult for West Ham, launching quick breaks in a whole new way.
Controlling possession from deep is another Rice-like quality.
“Like [Andrea] Pirlo, Phillips is a player who knows how to organise the possession play," Bielsa also said of Phillips.
More than his long passing, and more than his defensive work, what Bielsa loved was Phillips’ ability to pull the strings in midfield.
That’s why Man City paid a reported £45 million for him, and although he reportedly struggled to play with his back to goal under pressure at the beginning of Man City moves, at West Ham the play will almost always be in front of him.
At Leeds he often dropped between the centre-backs to form part of a back three, from where he would dictate the tempo. Here’s an example from 2021, a 2-1 defeat to Spurs, in which Phillips completed more passes than in any other match that season, with 78.
West Ham don’t play like Leeds or Man City, but nevertheless Moyes could do with greater and more purposeful control of the rhythms of a match when his side are forced to hold more possession.
In a 5-0 defeat to Fulham in December, West Ham were completely overrun in midfield, while in a 1-0 loss to Everton, they held 64 per cent possession but rarely looked in control, amassing an Expected Goals (xG) of just 0.7.
Those are the kinds of matches when Phillips’ capacity to quickly move the ball from side to side, or find the moment for an incisive Bielsa-taught forward pass, would come in handy.
Nobody can replace Rice, a once-in-a-generation player for West Ham. But both defensively and in possession, Phillips is as good a replacement as they could hope to find.