da pinnacle： Ahead of their game against Aston Villa, the question was ‘how are Leeds going to cope without Kalvin Phillips?’.
da prosport bet： We can understand why there may have been concern about the Yorkshire Pirlo missing six weeks of action, after all, he is an England international, but Friday’s game showed that Leeds can cope just fine without him.
Indeed, the Whites won 3-0 against Aston Villa, ending the Midlands club’s 100% winning start to the season, and they did it without Phillips.
However, in the early knockings of the game, it didn’t look as though the game was going to swing in Leeds’ favour with Pascal Struijk looking like something of a liability in the first 20 minutes before being hooked by Marcelo Bielsa, leaving Leeds without a recognised defensive midfielder on the pitch.
It would turn out that United had nothing to fear as an unlikely hero emerged to do most of the work that we’d usually see Kalvin Phillips do.
Indeed, Luke Ayling may not have been playing in Phillips’ position, but he did a lot of the same heavy lifting that we’d normally see from the Yorkshire Pirlo.
Phillips is known for a few things, but one of the main tools in his arsenal is his incredible long-passing, but at Villa Park, we saw Ayling embrace his inner Pirlo as he played 17 long passes with 10 of those finding the mark – not bad for a right-back playing at centre-half.
Away from the incredible passing display, Ayling was an absolute brick wall and helped Leeds keep their second clean sheet of the season by blocking three shots, making one tackle and winning four aerial duels.
Phillips wasn’t missed at all against Villa and that’s because Ayling stepped up to fill that gap brilliantly.
Fingers crossed this form can continue for the next six weeks as Leeds face over a month without their talisman.