View: West Brom player surely facing axe v Brentford after poor Saturday display
Matt Phillips started his first game for West Brom since the beginning of February against Birmingham City on Saturday.
The 29-year-old was drafted in to a newly revamped 4-2-3-1 formation, playing on the right side of an attacking midfield three behind Hal Robson-Kanu.
But the Scotland international failed to impress, and drew widespread criticism from fans on social media, as examined by West Brom News.
And in fairness, it’s not hard to see why so many supporters were so frustrated by Phillips’ showing.
Before being taken off after 63 minutes, the wide man registered no successful crosses, misplaced half of his 14 attempted passes, put both of his shots on goal wide, and had a dribble success rate that was 13.8% lower than his season average, as per Wyscout.
In short, it was a performance far beneath the standard required from a team pushing for automatic promotion.
A closer look at Phillips’ in game performance hardly does him any favours either.
As we can see from the pass map above, just two of his seven successful passes actually travelled forward, and three of his crosses were blocked by the first man.
In a 4-2-3-1, there is such a heavy emphasis on the creative talents of that trio behind the frontman, and by essentially blunting one fork of the trident, you’re always going to massively disadvantage a side.
For further evidence, just look at Phillips’ shot map.
The winger had two efforts on goal against the Blues, and neither even got close enough to the goal to go down as “wide”.
In fact, his second, struck from inside the box with a decent amount of time and space, was so abysmal that you could have doubled the height of the goalposts and he probably still would have missed, as pictured below.
It’s not that Phillips is a bad player by any means, and we all have off days, but right now, Albion cannot afford to be carrying any deadwood.
This was not a good performance from the Scotland star, and with Grady Diangana, Filip Krovinovic, and even Kamil Grosicki knocking on the door, it would be a surprise if he wasn’t axed when the Baggies lineup against Brentford on Friday night.
In other West Brom news, View: Worrying stat from Birmingham clash highlights issue Albion must address before 20/21.