Incredible optimism shown by The Athletic. He only ever plays a third of a season well. Maybe that's why 'the board' gave him 3 years for no reason to try and get 1 good full season out of him but it doesn't work like that guys.
"In the endless conversations concerning a new-look West Bromwich Albion, one man’s name has been barely mentioned.
The player in question has made 229 Championship appearances, won two promotions to the Premier League, played 142 times in that division, scoring 13 goals, and has won 16 international caps.
He has also contributed 26 goals and 27 assists, according to FBref.com, in six seasons with West Brom.
And yet Matt Phillips rarely gets considered when the supporters look ahead to what they hope will be a brighter, more exciting future under Steve Bruce.
There are good reasons, though, why Phillips has become a forgotten figure in the chat about the summer rebuild that’s coming at The Hawthorns after early-season hope of an instant return to the Premier League fizzled out into a mid-season change of manager and a 10th place finish, with the club’s lowest second-tier points total since they were almost relegated in the first months of this century.
Having turned 31 in March, there is a sense that the Scotland international is past the prime years of his career.
His tallies of 18 starts and 1,560 minutes in the Championship last season were the lowest of his Albion career on both counts, and Phillips’ total of five goal involvements in the league — three goals and two assists — was the lowest by far for any of his three seasons in the second division with West Brom, with his 11 in 2018-19 the next worst.
Phillips’ 2021-22 season had a familiar pattern: a strong start followed by a slight drop in form and then an injury from which he never fully recovered, before the campaign ended in anti-climax. And as West Brom fans look for signs of the club cutting ties with their less-than-glorious recent past, he is undoubtedly one of the players most would be content to see move on this summer. Phillips is perceived as a senior figure in a squad that has gone stale and needs breaking up.
Rightly or wrongly, he is viewed by many fans as a part of the problem, not the solution.
The reality, though, is that Phillips will probably be a West Brom player again next season. He signed a contract extension early in Valerien Ismael’s reign last summer that ties him to the club until the summer of 2024.
Phillips is among Albion’s higher earners, having come to the club at the peak of his career six years ago. And as then-manager Tony Pulis’ side were about to embark on a seventh consecutive season in the Premier League, his wages reflect his status at the time as a top-flight player.
And with an injury record that shows he has at least one lengthy absence each season, finding a club willing to take him on loan, on terms attractive to Albion, will be far from easy.
Phillips has averaged 23 starts and 2,029 minutes per league season in his six years with Albion, which have been split equally between the top two divisions. The appearance statistics are underwhelming, but when he does play Phillips tends to make an impact at Championship level.
Bruce was clearly frustrated at the amount of time Phillips, who won his last Scotland cap in September 2019, took to recover from a foot injury he sustained ahead of his first game in charge away to Sheffield United on February 9.
Phillips did not play under Bruce until April 15, by which time West Brom’s season was effectively dead. Even when the former Wycombe Wanderers youngster finally returned, it was clear that Bruce was impressed with what he saw from a player still spoken about by current and former team-mates as one of the best outside the Premier League.
Across his seven seasons in the Championship with Blackpool, QPR and Albion, Phillips averages 0.20 goals and 0.16 assists per 90 minutes — a handy ratio for a player not regarded as an out-and-out centre-forward.
Ismael did attempt to turn him into one of those last season, believing his pace, physicality and sure finishing made him a solid option to lead the line for a side playing the blood-and-thunder tactics that had taken his unfancied Barnsley team to the Championship play-offs months earlier. The plan did not work out, but it is easy to see why the Frenchman thought it might.
At 6ft tall, Phillips is built like a Premier League-level athlete and his goalscoring instincts have always been good. He has served Albion well and his personality, while a bit on the quiet side, is not one that would cause any manager concerns about problems in the dressing room.
The biggest challenges for Bruce, as his predecessors have found, will be managing Phillips’ body and his mind — Pulis once said of Phillips that his toughest opponent was often himself, given his tendency for self-doubt.
If Bruce gets the signings he wants over the line this summer, Phillips will not be an automatic starter next season, even when fit. Jed Wallace, one of Bruce’s main targets, plays in his preferred wide-right role. Should the man leaving Millwall this month as a free agent take his talents somewhere other than The Hawthorns, Bruce will look for alternatives at that position.
But Phillips has done jobs at wing-back and in central midfield, as well as in his favoured spot and, even as his career enters its latter stages, he knows his way around the Championship.
Phillips’ best years may be behind him but as part of a new-look, refreshed Albion squad, he might still have a role to play."
