Kalvin Phillips is a whole new player under Thomas Christiansen after he replaced Garry Monk at Leeds United.
If there’s one thing Leeds United really lacked last season, it was a reliable goalscoring midfielder. The Whites’ overreliance on Chris Wood, the Championship’s Golden Boot winner with 27 goals, was well established with centre-back Kyle Bartley the club’s joint-second most prolific player on six.
In total, Kalvin Phillips, Liam Bridcutt, Ronaldo Vieira and Eunan O’Kane scored a grand total of two goals between them in a combined 116 league appearances last season.
Therefore, although the likes of Pierre-Michel Lasogga, Samu Saiz and Gianni Elioski all arrived from abroad to spread the goals and creativity around in 2017/18, the club’s failure to sign a player renowned for scoring from a deep midfield position could have come back to haunt them.
New season, new man
Though it’s credit to the evolution of Kalvin Phillips that it hasn’t. The homegrown midfielder had scored just two goals in 52 games for Leeds prior to this season but he has trebled that total already in a remarkably prolific beginning to the campaign.
Phillips took his tally to four in nine during Saturday’s 3-2 win against high-flying Ipswich Town, capping an increasingly typical late surge into the box by rounding Bartosz Bialkowski and firing an accurate finish into the open net.
Changing the local-lad from a hard-working and versatile midfielder into Leeds’ answer to Frank Lampard is perhaps Thomas Christiansen’s most impressive achievement since arriving at Elland Road this summer.
Few even considered the fact that Phillips could thrive in such a role – including his former manager Garry Monk. Christiansen’s foresight and ability to look beyond the obvious has made Leeds, and Phillips, a different beast entirely.
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