Kalvin Phillips is set to miss out on today’s England squad, following his poor start to life on loan at West Ham United after he left Manchester City in January.
Phillips has so far made seven appearances for the Hammers after sealing a season-long loan move from City – and he could not really have had a worse start with the London club.
Phillips made mistakes leading to goals in his first two games, and was then sent off against Nottingham Forest.
Phillips was taken off at half-time in West Ham’s most recent game with Burnley – and it looks as though his struggles will now affect him at international level…
Manchester City midfielder Kalvin Phillips set to be dropped from latest England squad
Gareth Southgate will be naming his latest England squad today at 2pm – and there is already word about a few players.
One player is Phillips, with David Ornstein reporting in The Athletic that the 28-year-old has not been called up by Southgate for the upcoming friendly games against Brazil and Belgium.
Should this come to fruition later today, then it would mean Phillips has missed an England squad for the first time since before the 2022 World Cup.
It would be quite the fall from grace for Phillips, who was once a huge favourite of Southgate. He also won the England Men’s Player of the Year award in 2020/21.
Phillips must use latest setback as fuel
It is a real shame that Phillips is expected to miss out on today’s England squad.
He made the move to West Ham and was very optimistic about getting things back on track but so far, it hasn’t worked out for him. He has surely been feeling a lot of pressure to perform.
You can tell that the £150,000-a-week man is extremely low on confidence as a result of not playing at City, and that is really preventing him from playing as well as he did in his Leeds United days. West Ham midfielder Tomas Soucek recently admitted that things were ‘difficult’ for Phillips as a result of his lack of game time.
Today’s news will be very disappointing for the player. But in all honesty, he cannot really argue with Southgate’s decision.
It is on him now to use this as fuel to turn things around. There is still hope for him to be in England’s final Euro 2024 squad, he just needs to really knuckle down and make it happen for himself.
