Kalvin Phillips headed to West Ham late in the transfer window.
Some Newcastle United fans were furious / hysterical that the Manchester City midfielder hadn’t arrived at St James’ Park instead.
These NUFC supporters seeing it as an open goal, Newcastle United with Tonali missing the rest of the season and Joelinton likely to end up the same, along with all the other injury issues in the squad.
It was ridiculous apparently, that Newcastle hadn’t signed Kalvin Phillips, an England international available on loan, how stupid (according to them) that the club couldn’t see what an obvious signing this was.
The fact that the loan deal would have cost over half a million pounds per game in combined loan fee and wages, that didn’t make any difference, surely worth it they said if he makes the difference, gets us these extra points / wins.
Newcastle United so desperate for some short-term quality in midfield, especially defensively, this was a massive own goal by NUFC according to the critical fans.
The fact that for 20 months, Kalvin Phillips had only started two Premier League matches wasn’t a red flag for the critics. Even these two starts given by Pep Guardiola were both in the final week of the 2022/23 PL season AFTER Manchester City had already won the title.
Surely you would have massive concerns at taking somebody with less than four months of the season to go, just how effective could / would he be after so little football, how long to get up to speed?
We had seen with our own eyes when Kalvin Phillips got a very rare start in the League Cup match at St James’ Park, he looked really poor to me and nothing about what I saw said to me this was some brilliant obvious loan deal that simply had to happen.
Fair to say that by their own standards, Manchester City had dipped in the first half of the season, failing to win seven of their 19 PL matches and ‘only’ third in the table. Yet even with his team’s clear dip in form and having at times a significant number of injuries to deal with, Pep Guardiola STILL hadn’t called on Kalvin Phillips.
