JUST NOW: Good news as Kalvin Phillips makes honest Leeds United return admission as inspiration drawn from Elland Road exit

Leeds United were linked with a sensational reunion but play-off final defeat to Southampton ended any hope.

Kalvin Phillips cannot guarantee he’d have picked Leeds United over Ipswich Town if the former won promotion through the play-offs last season.

Leeds were linked with a sensational swoop for Phillips ahead of the summer transfer window, with the midfielder out of favour at Manchester City and struggling to find a new home, having endured a miserable loan spell at West Ham. Whether serious interest was there remains to be seen, but any move would only have been feasible ahead of a return to the Premier League.

As it happened, play-off final defeat to Southampton consigned Leeds to another year of Championship football and killed any faint hope of a home-coming, with the Whites academy star instead joining automatically-promoted Ipswich Town on loan. Speculation would only have intensified if that result was different but Phillips insists it wouldn’t have been so black-and-white for him.

“I went to that game [play-off final] and was devastated they didn’t go up,” Phillips told the East Anglian Daily Times. “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.”

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There was no such decision to be made in the end and Phillips moved to Ipswich, opening up quite the reunion at Portman Road. Former Leeds winger Jack Clarke joined him from Sunderland not long after, with Leif Davis already cemented as a first-team regular under Kieran McKenna.

And it was Davis who inspired his former Leeds teammate to drop down from champions elect City to top-flight new-boys Ipswich. Having left Elland Road for just £1million in 2022, following a tough loan spell at Bournemouth, the defender found his own home with the Tractor Boys, who were in League One at the time.

“If he was maybe two or three years older then he would have been a mainstay in that Leeds team,” the midfielder added of his long-time pal. “But football’s football and sometimes you have to leave places and friends that you like to go and experience new things and better your career.

“Me seeing Leif playing regularly and doing well here ignited something in me. I realised I wanted to feel a more important part of a team again. I wanted to be relied on every week, to be fit, to be healthy, to be playing, to get results, to defend results.

“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. I just needed a team that was together and to be at a place where I’d enjoy coming in every single day. I wanted to play every week in a team of fighters that work really hard. It just felt like Ipswich fitted me to a tee and I still feel that way.”

Newsfile

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JUST NOW: Good news as Kalvin Phillips makes honest Leeds United return admission as inspiration drawn from Elland Road exit

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