Speaking on the Blood Red Podcast, Liverpool centre-back Nat Phillips has admitted that he was very close to leaving Anfield last summer.
Before this season, Phillips was a relative unknown at Anfield, but due to a spate of injuries at centre-half, he got plenty of opportunities to play this term, and he cemented himself as a key player.
Indeed, the defender was so important for the Reds this term that he placed third in the club’s Player of the Year voting, but it all could have been so much different.
What’s been said?
Phillips says that he was incredibly close to leaving Liverpool on a permanent basis last summer.
“My bags were packed. I was in the car. That day of training at Liverpool I dropped out early because all of the staff knew that the move was going to happen, it would have been a permanent move, so they didn’t want me to get injured in training, so I came out of that early and as the day went on the fact that it wasn’t going to happen became a thing,” Philips said.
“It dawned on me and as time went on I thought that this wasn’t going to happen how we all imagined it would. That evening once my bags were packed I wasn’t going to move back in with my parents because I’d just come back from Germany and that was the process of me moving out at home.”
Lucky escape
Imagine where Liverpool would be now if Phillips had been sold.
The defender has been so important for the Reds this term, and if he wasn’t there, who knows what sort of state the Merseyside outfit could have been in.
Not only that, his value has skyrocketed this term, so even if he is sold this summer, the Anfield outfit will surely receive a bigger fee for him than they would have gotten last year.
Liverpool are very lucky that this deal didn’t come to fruition.
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