Why Leeds United recruitment has slowed as Victor Orta exit hangover and '18 per cent' reduction revealed — YEP 18/6/24

By Joe Donnohue

Leeds United's recruitment of promising, up-and-coming youngsters has ground to a halt over the past 12 months.

Following promotion to the Premier League four years ago, Leeds took their youth recruitment activity to the next level, ambitiously adding the likes of Crysencio Summerville, Joe Gelhardt, Sam Greenwood and Cody Drameh to the club's Under-21 setup, whilst committing fees in the low millions to their signings - a practice typically employed by only the very top clubs in English football with abundant resources.

While the aforementioned quartet have had varying degrees of success at Elland Road, the club's attempts to follow up on their acquisitions of summer 2020 has proved largely fruitless in comparison. Drameh appears set to leave this summer, while Greenwood and Gelhardt don't quite appear to fit in Farke's plans; Summerville's development and subsequent receipt of last season's Championship Player of the Year award, meanwhile, speaks for itself.

Nonetheless, all four have played a significant number of first-team games, which cannot be said for those who followed in their footsteps.

Lewis Bate, Sean McGurk, Leo Hjelde and Amari Miller all arrived for fees the following summer, but only two would make first-team bows, never truly considered anything more than bit-part players or standout U21s at best.

Mateo Joseph, signed in January 2022, is the outlier of that particular tranche of youth signings, excelling in the reserve squad and more recently breaking into the senior setup. He, however, remains on the fringes of the starting XI, where Gelhardt and Greenwood once took up residency.

Darko Gyabi, Sonny Perkins and Diogo Monteiro also arrived at Elland Road, initially featuring for the U21s, and while two of those three have gone on to make senior debuts, ahead of a second successive Championship campaign, none at this stage appear likely to have a considerable impact on first-team matters.

A considerable outlay has been spent on promising young players over the past couple of seasons with only a handful of genuine breakthroughs to show for it, which perhaps explains Leeds' apparent reluctance to commit to further spending on players not yet deemed the finished article, or close to it.

Additionally, United's youth recruitment policy was initially led by Victor Orta, the former director of football now of Sevilla and long-since departed from Elland Road. Former academy manager Adam Underwood was last summer promoted to head of football operations, overseeing first-team affairs, while his replacement Martin Diggle was only appointed in February 2024.

Equally, the club's head of recruitment Jordan Miles saw his arrival rubberstamped in the same month, meaning that for a period between Orta's exit last April and the club's recruitment staff supplementation four months ago, the signing of youngsters took on secondary or even tertiary importance, superseded by technical director Gretar Steinsson and recruitment consultant Nick Hammond's need to add first-team-ready players.

While the likes of Summerville and Pascal Struijk - a pioneering Under-21 signing who broke through to play a key first-team role - have been unqualified successes in the youth acquisition department, Leeds' hit-rate at the time of writing has been on the wane in recent years. Coupled with the need to return to the top flight at the earliest opportunity and Daniel Farke's own admission shortly after his July 2023 arrival that there would be greater separation between the U21s and senior group, it is understandable to see why the club's once-prolific recruitment of players for the team beneath the first-team has dried up.

That is not to say Leeds have turned a blind eye to their academy or academy recruitment. Last week, United announced the signing of 10 teenagers to two-year scholarship terms, while the club's Under-18s were successful in reaching the FA Youth Cup Final for the first time since 1998 last season, demonstrating that locally-recruited talent still has a major role to play at Thorp Arch. Similarly, the club's recruitment from north of the border has seen the likes of highly-rated pair Josh McDonald and Lewis Pirie arrive in the last 12 months, featuring for the U18s last season but bound to make more of a splash at U21 level in 2024/25, which may suggest a shift in policy, to target U18s as opposed to more expensive, more developed U21s.

In essence, though, Leeds have spent heavily, in academy terms at least, on players who are yet to show themselves as bona fide first-teamers. This is difficult to justify from a financial standpoint when parachute payments have fallen by 18 per cent this coming season, while the club are no longer in receipt of centralised Premier League remuneration or broadcast revenue at top flight levels.