OPINION
Kalvin Phillips signed a new five-year contract with Leeds on Monday which will keep him at Elland Road until 2024.
It’s a huge statement of intent from Andrea Radrizzani and Leeds and it’s a massive display of loyalty from a homegrown player who could easily have moved to the Premier League over the summer.
Marcelo Bielsa has helped make Phillips the player he is today.
Before the Argentine arrived he was an average midfielder who scored seven goals in the 17/18 season.
Bielsa pulled him back, put him in the defensive midfield position and turned him into a player who is worth £20m+.
That’s the claim of Phil Hay, who posted a tweet that said Leeds turned down three bids for Phillips over the summer, the last for a massive £20m before add-ons.
That’s a huge amount of money for a Championship midfielder and it shows both how highly rated he is at Leeds and the scale of ambition from owner Radrizzani that he wasn’t sold.
Leeds say offers for Phillips from three Premier League clubs were turned down during the summer window, the last worth £20m before add-ons. #lufc
— Phil Hay (@PhilHay_) September 9, 2019
Phillips the vital piece of Bielsa-ball
It’s fair to say that Phillips is key for Leeds.
The central player in the Bielsa system, he’s the one player that Leeds would really have struggled to replace had he left.
His WyScout stats before and after Bielsa show what an impact the manager has had on his game.
In the 17/18 season, he made an average of 33 passes per 90 minutes with a success rate of 76%.
In the 18/19 season, that had gone up to an average of 56 passes per 90 minutes with a success rate of 86.3%.
So far this season that’s gone up again to 61.17 per 90 minutes with an 88.1% success rate.
He breaks up the opposition’s attacks and he starts Leeds moving forward.
As Hay said, keeping him was “as crucial as any deal in the transfer market” and securing him on a long-term deal is another step to securing Premier League football at Leeds.
for all the talk about who was coming in, Phillips not going was as crucial as any deal in the transfer market. No idea how Leeds would have set about replacing him.
— Phil Hay (@PhilHay_) September 9, 2019