Holding all the cards - The Square Ball 8/6/22

RAISE YOU

Written by: Steven York

It didn’t take long for the heady excitement of final day survival to evaporate. Us fans may be endlessly rewatching extended highlights of an era-defining game, but the media have cheerfully moved on. It’s not unexpected that newspaper columns were more dedicated to the final day contest at the top than the fight to survive down at the bottom, but I do think there’s a remarkable story behind Leeds’ survival.

Pundits and journalists, having already written Leeds off, were publishing articles about where deserving stars such as Kalvin Phillips and Raphinha would soon be calling home before a ball was even kicked. Before kick off you’d be forgiven for thinking we were already relegated, if transfer rumours were to be believed.

In victory, Leeds still have an uphill battle ahead as another season begins: the transfer window officially opens this Friday, until 1st September. Survival is assured, but safety is only temporary in the Premier League. If you aren’t constantly striving to remain competitive in a financial arms race that has long since gone out of control, then you’re slipping backwards. Clubs like Aston Villa have spent hundreds of millions of pounds and still can’t quite escape the gravitational pull of those bottom three spaces in the table.

That safety, albeit temporary, has handed some meaningful negotiating power back to Leeds. It has been assumed for the entire season that Raphinha will leave this summer. It was unclear how punishing the financial end of that inevitability would be, but his departure has seemed locked in since August. Survival has bolstered Leeds’ confidence at the negotiating table, though little else has changed. Raphinha will likely end up moving to Barcelona and he’ll do so with love and appreciation, if not enormous sadness. It’s one of those rare, bittersweet moments when both parties can probably feel okay about it. Leeds not only got to experience a brilliant player for two seasons, but he gave everything he had to the cause while he was here. He is, sadly, deserving of the chance to play for an elite club, and few could argue he hasn’t deserved it.

Raphinha’s contract runs until 2024 and Leeds are still a Premier League club. His departure might seem certain but his valuation is something the club must hold firm on. While Victor Orta should be praised for acquiring a talent this impressive for the comparatively tiny fee of £17m, it’s equally important that his value to Leeds is reflected in his departure. Rumours of £30m offers come insultingly short of his worth to the club, let alone how poorly it would benchmark against other signings. If Leeds have a humble pot of money to spend to improve the squad then maximising the transfer value for an outgoing asset is all the more important. Make no mistake, Raphinha leaving makes us significantly weaker.

Kalvin Phillips’ future is in the balance, despite surviving the drop. While he’s expressed a desire to remain at the club, it’s inevitable that those with the deepest pockets and loftiest ambitions will come calling. He might be comfortable remaining at his boyhood club in face of interest from Scum or West Ham, but when Manchester City start jingling their Premier League trophy full of cash, it may change the situation somewhat. Again, Leeds hold the cards at that negotiating table. Phillips’ contract runs until 2024 and he’s reportedly interested in signing a new deal, though one may expect a Grealish-like release clause to be carefully added.

It’s also worth remembering that serious work is needed generally. Not just in reaction to our struggles this season and positions where we’ve been substandard, but to replace those nearing the downward slope of their careers. Between serious injury and grandfather time, the first team is short on players who you can imagine forming the backbone of the club for the next chapter. While Sam Greenwood did an outstanding job in midfield against Brentford, it might be madness to consider him Mateusz Klich’s permanent successor on the basis of looking comfortable for an hour there once.

There is also the often overlooked downside of doing too much recruitment in one go. Teams need time to bond and gel; you simply cannot assemble eleven random but individually excellent players into a team and assume they’re effective. It’s why international teams need regular training camps. It’s why under Marcelo Bielsa it took a while before new signings were put into action. You need to get the players working together regularly in order to create familiar movements and rehearsed actions. Teams that play well do so instinctively. In tight, tense moments there is rarely time to reflect on all available options. Instinct has to take over and whether by leaning on learned behaviours or implementing trained and coached transitions, players need to act quickly. A group who haven’t played much together haven’t yet built the understanding to act as a unit on instinct. You see this occasionally when newly promoted teams attempt to bed eight new signings into their first team and look disjointed, while sides who are weaker man-for-man but are a cohesive unit perform much better.

As we enter the annual headache of transfer activity, Leeds hold all the cards. The goal this summer is simple: a better squad in September.