Kalvin Phillips says whether he would’ve joined Leeds United over Ipswich if Daniel Farke’s side won promotion
Phillips was actually in attendance for Leeds‘ 1-0 defeat to Southampton in the play-off final at Wembley, a day which all but ended any hope of him moving back to Elland Road.
Leeds reportedly had an agreement in principle to sign Phillips from Manchester City, a club where he was very much surplus to requirements after a tough loan spell at West Ham.
Ipswich Town were one of the three teams to pip Leeds to promotion last season and it was the Tractor Boys whom Phillips ended up joining.
Considering how close the race was between the two clubs, seeing Phillips join Ipswich was a bitter pill for many Leeds fans to swallow.
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Phillips on if he’d picked Leeds over Ipswich in summer
As has been well documented, Phillips was a boyhood Leeds fan and his time at Elland Road saw him live out the dream of many supporters.
However, since his exit, Phillips’ career has taken a real nosedive and although he was part of Man City’s treble winning team, he barely featured. In fact, his only two Premier League starts that season came after City had been crowned champions.
A loan move to West Ham in January earlier this year was supposed to help him get back on track, but if anything, only saw his stock decrease even more.
As such, the chance to return to Leeds will have undoubtedly appealed to Phillips in the summer, but speaking in an interview with the East Anglian Daily Times, he claims it would’ve been a ‘close call’ between the Whites and Ipswich had both sides gone up.
He said: “I went to that game [play-off final] and was devastated they didn’t go up. Obviously I wanted Leeds to get promoted. It’s a club very close to my heart.
“Even if Leeds had been promoted and Ipswich had maybe come up in the play-offs then it still would have been a very close call as to where I’d have gone because I just love the story of Ipswich. The more I looked into the team and the manager and the club’s rebuild the more I liked.
“I’d played against a few of the boys here and I just felt like they were good people. I could tell what type of team it would be if I did come here.
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