Kalvin Phillips

I hope he has a good game tonight. He's a lovely lad who has moved on from Leeds and clearly got stars in his eyes. He wasn't the right player for what we needed, but he's still a good player and I hope he can go and show that in a blue shirt. He's never going to be as good as Rodri, who is? But he can still make an impact. He needs to just be confident and go and show for the ball more, that's the main thing we need from him. Last season both Rico and Rodri got the ball taken off them when doing it, and it led to goals. Both against Spurs iirc. Maddison got robbed by Jesus and got away with it at the weekend. Jorginho in a much safer position got robbed of the ball and it led to a goal. These things happen, but you've got to keep getting into those positions and not go hiding away.
 
I think he can do a job here, but its got to be in a double pivot with someone else, Kovacic and Phillips will do a job, the lone DM role under Pep is so demanding.
 
cyan said:
Good to see that Pep was pleased with his contribution - but the fact that Pep also felt the need to bring on Ake and play with 5 at the back in order to get the sort of control he likes showed that in the game he didn't feel that Phillips could do that. And he didn't - he created a bit more chaos - snapping into tackles, disrupting passing lines, trying to carry the ball forward. The five behind him gave him the freedom to do that. Had anyone else seen sent off we wouldn't have played that way - because Rodri would have kept control and we could have controlled the ball further up the field. But he was, and so the tactics had to change to fit the players available. In the same way, our tactics against Newcastle and Wolves will need to be tweaked to accommodate Philips's style of play rather than Rodri's - and it will be intriguing to see what those tactics are and the personnel used.
Click to expand...
Did you hear Pep’s reasoning? He said Forest were getting wide overlaps too easily and brought Ake on to negate that from happening.

Nowt to do with Kalvin, just the symptom of having a player fewer.
 
I want him to do well and prove Pep wrong so badly… I’m hoping that’s Pep’s angle.

Hope he gets a massive cheer and a song from the start tonight, even if it’s something generic like “one Kalvin Phillips” can’t imagine anyone will come up with something that will stick in such a short time.
 
Good to see that there are some more benign opinions on here than usual. Look, if he's not good enough, he's not good enough. Let's see first, eh? This will I think be his first start in an important game against a good-level opponent. Very interested to see what he can do. Without fear nor favour.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
✖
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.