Kalvin Phillips: The League's Best DM?
A look at some of the underlying numbers behind Kalvin Phillips' season so far
A thread on Kalvin Phillips performance compared to other Championship DMs so far this season.
As we know, before the arrival of Bielsa, Kalvin Phillips was a player who divided opinion amongst Leeds fans. He was, in fact, one who many would have happily seen replaced. For the most part, this was due to the fact that he'd featured as a box-to-box midfielder, a defensive midfielder and no 10.
Despite playing a lot of games, he'd never made any one position his own, until Bielsa arrived and made him first choice for the defensive midfield role. Since then, his performances have been so strong that Leeds slapped a £30m price tag on him this summer to ward off Villa.
So, what sets Kalvin apart from other players playing in a deep midfield role in the Championship?
We made a few graphs to show Kalvin's defensive and passing numbers compared to the rest of the DMs in the division. We did the same with Romaine Sawyers, Trevor Chalobah, Ben Watson and Matt Grimes.
A word on Grimes - as much as he didn't fit into Garry Monk's Leeds team, it's wrong to write him off as 'shite' as many do. Last year he was one of the best passing deep-lying midfielders in the Championship.
Before breaking these graphs down, first things first - a note on Wyscout's interpretation of interceptions:
Like me, you may be very surprised to see how low KP ranks for interceptions. I did some digging into this and discovered that a lot of what many would consider to be interceptions, Wyscout calls 'defensive duels.'
For example, if a pass is played into the feet of an attacker and the defender gets to the ball in front of them, that is a defensive duel. An interception is made much earlier, when the defensive player steps out to the ball to meet it much closer to where it was originally passed from.
As Leeds play a man-marking system in which KP is mostly deployed to follow the opposition no 10/playmaker all over the pitch, he is almost always touch-tight to the man and thus his defensive duels are so high and interceptions so low.
For visual examples of duels vs interceptions, take a look at these examples involving Ben White, another player who dominates in def duels over interceptions according to Wyscout.
This is a defensive duel:
This is an interception:
So back to the player report bar charts: Whilst Grimes and Sawyers show very impressive numbers for passing, neither come close to KP in terms of defensive output and in fact aside from Sawyers' passing and long passing acc %, both are outperformed by KP at passing as well.
Meanwhile, Watson and Chalobah compare more closely to KP in defensive metrics but they are still outperformed by him in every single one aside from interceptions (addressed above) and in aerial duels. Watson also has a slightly higher succ rate for tackles, but makes less p90.
Chalobah makes almost as many passes p90 as KP, but with nowhere near the accuracy, whilst Watson lags way behind as a passer. None of the 4 come anywhere near to making the amount of long passes that KP makes, with his regular switches of play and long passes behind full-backs.
Long story short? KP has developed into the complete all-round defensive midfielder at this level. Whilst some teams would employ a destroyer as well as a deep-lying playmaker, Leeds have KP capable of setting the tempo of their passing as well as win the ball.
Of course, Leeds hope to win promotion this year and make him a Premier League player, but the truth is that he could be there already. If he does find himself there next year, at Leeds or otherwise, he could be knocking on the door for England.
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