Leeds’ transfer window: A summer nobody at Elland Road ever wants to repeat - The Athletic 2/9/23
Phil Hay
The pettiness of Monday afternoon at Leeds United was all
rather wonderful but somewhere in the trolling of Nadiem Amiri was a sober
consequence of the club’s summer 2023 transfer window — as if somebody was
bound to push their luck too far at some point, and Amiri was that person.
To recap, Amiri’s on-off, on-off transfer from Bayern
Leverkusen was as close as it got to being actually on when Leeds flew him over
from Germany at the start of this week with the aim of getting down to
business. He and Leeds’ new manager Daniel Farke spoke privately and that
conversation was productive, or so it seemed. Amiri looked around the club’s
Elland Road stadium and Thorp Arch training complex and all Leeds wanted was
his permission to activate a medical and tie up the loose ends.
Then came the pantomime. Amiri’s camp moved the goalposts
and Leeds found themselves facing financial demands they were not anticipating.
After some consideration, and sensing they were being messed about, the club
stopped negotiating and told the 26-year-old midfielder to make his own way
home. The private jet they hired to fly him in would not be there to use for
the return trip. Finding a flight back to Germany was his problem.
Amiri to Elland Road, deal aborted and exasperation all
round, was the latest leg in the relay of people taking Leeds on or taking the
piss.
The club’s new chairman, Paraag Marathe, has a phrase he
likes to use — sport is sport whether the ball is ‘stuffed or puffed’ — but
football is the wild west and here was the summer to prove it: Andrea
Radrizzani’s takeover of Italian club Sampdoria while proposing to use Elland
Road as collateral for a bank loan to fund it; Tyler Adams, a USMNT poster-boy,
threatening legal action as leverage for a post-relegation move back to the
Premier League with Bournemouth; Max Wober promising to stick around… for as
long as it took him to find a way out; Willy Gnonto threatening to go by any
means necessary, whether he had the right to or not; Luis Sinisterra
challenging the legalities of his release clause hard enough to force a
dramatic loan to Dean Court last night; Max Aarons being led to water, only to
take a sip and promptly sod off, another Bournemouth jab-in-the-ribs. And
Amiri, traipsing down Briggate, a main thoroughfare in Leeds city centre,
waiting to book a plane to carry him back to Leverkusen.
Does the NFL, a competition without the spectre of
relegation or the carrot of promotion, move and shake like this? Maybe it does.
In his 20-odd years with its San Francisco 49ers franchise,
has Marathe ever had his personal contact details published on Twitter for the
purposes of constructive correspondence, as happened a month ago? Maybe he has.
But association football is another world, with its own
ecosystem, predators and politics.
The upside for Leeds’ new ownership group is that in
educational terms, they have now seen it all in the space of one summer and one
European transfer window. With Friday night’s deadline gone, they are through a
near-impossible baptism. And with so much water under the bridge, ending with
the saga around Sinisterra in the final hours, they seem satisfied with the end
result.
It does not take much experience of a specific sport to know
that any club of any standing who finish a season needing a takeover, a new
manager, a new technical director and a new squad have little or no chance of
enjoying the perfect summer.
Relegation from the Premier League exacerbated stress levels
at Elland Road and was the cause of many of the club’s problems in the first
place.
Some of what went on in the wake of that decisive season
finale at home to Tottenham Hotspur on May 28, Leeds brought on themselves;
clanging consequence which were nothing less than the sound of their own
actions. Some of what went on was football proving that, no matter how
considered or methodical you try to be, some situations are not yours to
dictate.
There were uncomfortable truths waiting to be learned by
49ers Enterprises, and the American investment fund has learned several. One of
the harshest was spelt out by a senior figure at the club, who was asked by a
supporter midway through the summer how likely Leeds were to hang onto key
players. The brutal answer? “Almost everyone wants to leave.”
Leeds’ three-season absence from the second tier of the
English game was not so prolonged that they forgot where the EFL lies in the
food chain but this transfer window has reminded them of two things. One is
that very few footballers who think they are better than the Championship want
to play there. The second is that, more than ever, transfer negotiations which
come down to money and money alone will be lost if a Premier League club are
competing with you for a player’s services.
They were not under the impression that Adams, for example,
was desperate to go to Bournemouth specifically. Chelsea, yes, but
11,000-capacity Dean Court not so much. The Premier League equals exposure,
though, and Bournemouth had it. Adams was sure to make good his escape.
Only Liam Cooper really bucked the trend by saying no to a
Saudi Arabian approach in the interests of discussing a new deal at Elland
Road. His reward was to injure a foot in the season opener almost four weeks
ago. The defender hasn’t played since.
In too many cases, escaping from Leeds was too easy. If
there is one thing the club will take away from the summer, it is the folly of
leaving themselves so exposed to release clauses they cannot control.
Long-term, avoiding a repeat of this window would involve
sailing on a different tack were Leeds to return to the Premier League because
the reality is that, Gnonto aside, every player who left or tried to leave was
entitled to do so.
Relegation loan clauses inserted in numerous contracts —
provisions which could be activated merely by an interested club agreeing to
full salary recovery for a season — were the product of Leeds insisting that
signings they made while in the Premier League committed to wage reductions of
up to 60 per cent if the club went back down to the EFL. New arrivals reacted
to that suggestion by demanding concessions in return and however questionable
the clauses seem, no club covering their back by implementing such major cuts
in pay could expect to have their cake and eat it.
In short, Radrizzani did not want to find himself covering a
Premier League wage bill in the Championship and as a result, Leeds and 49ers
Enterprises set out this summer with grand plans for retentions, only to
discover that most of the players they wanted to retain saw their futures
elsewhere.
It might be that the funding behind the 49ers’ operation
avoids the need to dance with the devil when Leeds next go up to the top
division; that wage reductions need not compromise the club so much. Farke has
said, and it is hard to disagree, that letting the tail of the dressing room
wag the dog is no way to run a club, although the trouble with Aarons and Amiri
made the point that player power is alive and well. But until promotion
materialises, that discussion is for another day.
The positive byproduct of so many exits is that Leeds have
hacked big chunks off a wage bill which was costing more than £10million a
month last season, reducing it to around half as much.
And a feather in the cap of the new board is that despite so
little arriving in the way of transfer fees — considerably less than was
recouped by fellow relegated sides Southampton and Leicester City — they were
able to not only dig their heels in over Gnonto’s valuation but find the
finance to spend and make meaningful bids: £7million on Ethan Ampadu, £10.5m
for Joel Piroe, £5m tabled for Amiri, a further seven-figure sum offered for
Joseph Paintsil at Genk, a combined £10m or thereabouts invested in Ilia Gruev
and Glen Kamara. Leeds promised an aggressive window, albeit in the
Championship, there is only so aggressive a club’s window can be. Farke, for
one, would consider his squad as it is to be in the promotion mix.
And Farke, an anchor in strong tides, might be as important
a recruit as Leeds have made, a manager their fans are warming to quickly and
who looks like the Championship, which he won in two of the previous five
completed seasons with Norwich City, is his second home.
There was no ideal way of finding a first-team boss at the
end of last season because the summer itself was so far from ideal.
With hindsight, it would have made sense for a
post-relegation deal that would see Radrizzani sell to 49ers Enterprises to
have been in place before Leeds actually went down, given that he was most
likely going to be selling anyway. In a perfect world, 49ers Enterprises would
have named a replacement for departed director of football Victor Orta before
appointing Farke, but time ticking towards the start of pre-season gave them no
choice.
Gretar Steinsson appeared as technical director soon after,
taking on recruitment duties which had previously fallen to Nick Hammond on an
interim basis. Leeds have been so pleased with Hammond’s input that there is a
strong chance they will look to extend or make permanent his temporary
contract.
Angus Kinnear remains as chief executive and however much
cynicism there has been about him outside the club, the 49ers saw nothing in
his work which tempted them to find a new CEO. Sources close to the takeover,
who asked not to be named for reasons of confidentiality, say the sale by
Radrizzani to the 49ers fund was unlikely to have crossed the line without
Kinnear in the middle of it, managing both sides. The extreme tension of the
buy-out was symbolic of the weeks that followed, a hierarchy deprived of any
chance to relax and a club condemned to a permanently high heart-rate.
Farke has been the exception to the rule of stress, at least
externally. The fascinating aspect of his job interview with Leeds’ new board
was that unlike other candidates, one of whom put forward a presentation
running to scores of pages, he made it clear to the club that he was
interviewing them, not the other way round; almost implying that the role had
to be shown to be good enough for him, because he was clearly good enough for
it.
It was a brave approach, risking a tone of arrogance, but
the interview panel liked it and could see that Farke had the CV to back up his
confidence. On the evidence of his early work, they are pleased that they
avoided a break-neck approach to an easier candidate. In one of the many press
conference questions related to Gnonto’s attempt to leave, Farke was asked if
the club had asked him not to use the winger. “No one tells me who to play,”
Farke replied, and he is running the show with that mindset. No one has told
him who to sign either.
The feeling at Elland Road is that, step by taxing step,
they got there or thereabouts in the end: passing the deadline with a coach
they have faith in, the calibre of signings they envisaged and a dressing room
which, without being perfect, has changed as much as it was likely to. The
players who have gone wanted to go and perhaps it is for the best that they
have. In Amiri, they might only have been hooking up with someone else who was
not quite sure. The depth at left-back is debatable, history on repeat at
Elland Road, but Farke seems content.
Sinisterra, the last act in the drama yesterday, summed everything up. The release clause in his contract expired midway through August but in his view and that of his camp, Leeds had not honoured the clause as they should have done following a prior approach from Nice, an approach which was rejected. United disagreed but as this week wore on, the club were increasingly concerned that obstructing the winger’s exit would result in a protracted court case, stemming from legal objections made by his camp.
Bournemouth tabled a loan bid yesterday and Sinisterra
passed a medical in London little over an hour before the deadline, so late
that completion required a deal sheet after the 11pm cut-off passed. Jaidon
Anthony, Bournemouth’s 24-year-old winger with almost 100 appearances behind
him, came the other way on loan. Anthony had been at Bournemouth’s team hotel
in London when the process suddenly gathered pace, preparing for their game
against Brentford today. Leeds were adamant that they would only go through
with losing Sinisterra if a suitable replacement was offered up by the club
signing the Colombian. United’s high opinion of Anthony was key in making
Bournemouth’s approach attractive.
And that, after three extraordinary months, was that, a
frantic chapter of transition closed. The 49ers are new to full ownership of a
football club but it might be that they have seen their hardest summer already,
Leeds’ most complicated since insolvency in 2007. There is one thing everyone
in the boardroom agrees on: a window like this one? Never again.