Kalvin Phillips faces having to accept HUGE pay cut to end Man City nightmare after West Ham loan hits new low

HE’S had an extraordinary career, Kalvin Phillips.

A Treble-winner and one of only 12 living Englishmen to have started the final of a major international tournament.

A home-town hero at Leeds, where he was the kingpin of Marcelo Bielsa’s buccaneering Championship-winning side and feted as the ‘Yorkshire Pirlo’.

England’s Player of the Year in 2021, when the Three Lions reached a final for the first time in more than half a century.

Indeed, Phillips has featured in most of England’s best wins of the last three years — against Germany and Denmark at those Euros, home and away in qualifiers against Italy, against a Belgium side ranked No 1 in the world, the World Cup thrashing of Senegal and in last autumn’s hammering of the Scots.

That record for Gareth Southgate’s side points to a great irony.

If Phillips had stayed put as a Manchester City bench-warmer, he would be going to Germany this summer and quite possibly as a starter.

The mighty man-bun man has been a fine footballer and, at 28, he might become one again.

Phillips is also a good bloke too, much-loved in the England squad and attracting a full house from the entire Leeds staff when the club held a leaving do before his Etihad move in a £45million deal.

But right now Phillips has become unwatchable. Toe-curling, cringeworthy, hide-behind-the-sofa-the-Daleks-are-coming levels of unwatchable.

His loan switch to West Ham, which originally looked sensible for club and player, is an unmitigated disaster.

And it feels as if Phillips is at the centre of a football-wide conspiracy which has deemed that anything which could go wrong, will go wrong.