'Paying for it' - Leeds United insider offers thoughts on Elland Road loan policy as clear-out continues - YEP 26/7/23

Former Leeds United defender and First Division title winner Tony Dorigo offers his thoughts on the number of outgoing loans currently being sanctioned at Elland Road.

By Tony Dorigo

Clearly, it's not ideal. And again, I'm certainly not privy to what's in players' contracts but there's no doubt that the club will do the best with what they can. Clearly those contracts allow for this sort of thing and it is frustrating. I'm sure not ideal, but I suppose the gamble was clearly made when you're trying to attract these players, that you're thinking relegation isn't going to be an option, but unfortunately, the worst has happened and we're kind of paying for it. We're going to have to take some short term pain it seems, no doubt.

It's difficult. It really is because any successful side, I've certainly been at, you don't want to leave. You certainly don't want to leave you want to stay in there, you want to fight for your place and you want to go out there and perform for the club. It is difficult because I understand these players are clearly internationals for their countries, what have you. But I think the bigger picture is certainly an exciting one but you have to buy into that and you have to think: ‘Will I stay in the thoughts of my country's manager?’

There's so many things involved in it, but I think within a dressing room, I think it's really important you have unity and a clarity. And I think sooner that happens, the better. Whoever it is, if they're staying or going, I just think the sooner that's done better. And of course, it's not easy, you can't do it overnight. As we're seeing, it's happening here and there but hopefully that will come to an end quickly and the only way it really does come to an end finally is the window shutting. So, it's kind of watch this space.

I think the Monaco friendly certainly was a good game to play again. It's another very high tempo game against a very good side. I think what we kind of need to understand is that Monaco are back in Europe and they've got some excellent players. We know from the previous friendly against them that they are a good team, and you saw it again. But for us, it was important, I think, to understand more so what [Daniel] Farke is trying to do and how he wants to play and see how that's translating through to the players.

Certainly the first half more so we saw that, we saw Illan Meslier trying to play out from the back, always looking for options in that midfield area as well, not just going to punting it forward, and I thought Ampadu was very good for his first game. You could see at times, obviously trying too hard with the balls forward, but I thought overall, some of his play was excellent because suddenly we had that pivot that was certainly looking forward and getting us going.

So, that was the main thing that I took out from the game, Archie Gray alongside did very well as well. But I think clearly what we were missing was that end product, in the second half even more. Obviously once you make a lot of changes it is difficult, but I thought first half, we certainly looked dangerous without quite having an end product, and the second half was just a little bit more disappointing, but with those changes I suppose that was always going to happen.