West Ham legend Frank McAvennie ripped into Kalvin Phillips in a recent interview, urging the board to “send him back”.
It would be an understatement to say that Kalvin Phillips has had a rough start to his loan at West Ham. He has been involved in three massive errors leading to goals and got sent off against Nottingham Forest. His poor form does not come through a lack of effort, but he just does not seem able to perform at the level required currently.
While Phillips has rightfully pointed out how long he has not played for and admitted he is not at the fitness levels he would like, it does not change the fact that he has not been performing well. Former West Ham striker Frank McAvennie has clearly seen enough of the midfielder to decide that he is not good enough to wear the claret and blue.
“I’d send Phillips back – he’s done nothing,” he exclaimed when talking to Football Insider. “He hasn’t done anything good at all and he’s been terrible. I know in his first game [against Bournemouth] Kurt Zouma gave him a terrible pass that led to their goal, but he’s had an absolute shocker since then.”
“To be fair to him, he’d not played [while at City] – but he’s making excuses. I don’t know if he’s as good as people are making him out to be.”
“He was great when he was playing for Leeds. But when he’d played for England, he’s played against rubbish teams. Is he good enough to play in the Premier League?”
Unfortunately you can not argue against the criticism of his performances, they have been woeful, but to claim that he is not good enough to play in the Premier League at all is outrageous. The comment about playing against “rubbish teams” is also simply not true, although he did play against Scotland twice.
“He hasn’t proven anything to me even though I thought he was the kind of player that West Ham needed,” he continued. “The harder he tries, the worse it’s getting for him.”
Like many, McAvennie has brushed off just how much of an effect not playing would have had on the Englishman. Simply put, Phillips has to play games in order to gain confidence and match sharpness. He could still turn out to be a sensational player for our Irons but he will not be able to do that without patience from fans – slating him will just make things tougher.
