Speaking on The Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, Daniel Chapman revealed that one of Leeds United’s stars this season, Kalvin Phillips, admitted he didn’t know how to play under Marcelo Bielsa when he first arrived.
Phillips, who is an academy product of Leeds, has proven to be one of the crucial players in the club’s title-winning campaign this term, scoring two goals and providing two assists over his 37 appearances in the Championship, with the defensive midfielder averaging 2.6 tackles and 1.4 interceptions per game and this has culminated in a season average WhoScored match rating of 7.22/10 – prior to Wednesday’s fixture against Charlton.
This rating is enough to rank him as the club’s second-best performer so far this season. However, it would appear that this was not always something that even Phillips himself believed likely, as Daniel Chapman recently stated on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast that the 24-year-old was initially confused about his role when Marcelo Bielsa took over at the club back in 2018.
He said: “Pre-season, you didn’t see anything positive and Bielsa doesn’t do many interviews, so there was no press conferences. So nobody had any idea what was really happening.
“Kalvin Phillips did an interview during those games, he said: ‘I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing. I think he’s [Bielsa] trying to play me in defence.’
“So everybody’s really worried about how this is going to turn out. Half-time against Stoke [Leeds’ first fixture of the 2018/19 season], we’re winning, we look incredible, we’re attacking constantly, the players haven’t stopped moving, and they haven’t stopped moving for two years since. It has been a joy.”
TIF Thoughts…
The fact that Phillips was unsure of how he was supposed to play under Bielsa when the Argentine first took charge of the club, to becoming one of Leeds’ best players of the season in a title-winning campaign, is yet further evidence of just how much Marcelo Bielsa has revolutionised the club.
Has Kalvin Phillips been Leeds' best player this season?
Yes
No
And, with Leeds set to feature in their first Premier League campaign for 16 years next season, we can’t wait to see how that revolution continues.