Archie Gray playing for Leeds is football at its romantic best — but accounts don’t allow for it — The Athletic 30/6/24
By Amitai Winehouse
If you were transported back to Elland Road on any given
Saturday between now and the 1960s, you’d be liable to run into someone with
Gray DNA.
Whether it was Eddie running down the wing, or Frank at
full-back, or Andy playing up front, they were a fairly consistent presence on
the pitch in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Then Eddie took his turn on the
sidelines, managing the club in the 1980s, and working as assistant manager to
David O’Leary in the late 1990s and early 2000s before settling into the
commentary box.
Essentially, if you knew Leeds United, you knew the Grays.
Eddie had to retire from commentary a few years ago but just
when the link to the Grays seemed to be weakening, the chatter started around a
new Gray… Archie. There was a kid in the academy, the son of Andy, grandson of
Frank, who was the next big thing. He began training with the first team at
just 15, with the club having to agree terms with his high school to allow it.
Then, in the middle of an injury and Covid-19 crisis, he was
put on the bench for a Premier League match. If he had come on, he would have
become Leeds’s youngest-ever player — a record that stretches back to Peter
Lorimer (15 years and 289 days) in May 1962.
But Marcelo Bielsa did not substitute him on. The record was
not broken, and Gray had to wait until last summer to make his first senior
appearance in a Leeds shirt. He was thrown in from the start of the campaign
under Daniel Farke and barely left the team. At 18, he made 44 appearances in
his debut campaign.
Leeds lost the Championship play-off final, and that, it
turns out, is expected to be that. It looks as though he will be leaving, maybe
to Tottenham, having been pursued by several teams across the Premier League
and Europe. Not like great uncle Eddie, who played for one club (Leeds) for 17
years and only ever pulled on one other shirt: Scotland’s. Not like grandpa
Frank either, who did leave Leeds after nine years for Nottingham Forest, where
he won the European Cup, but then returned to Leeds — his two spells totalling
15 years.
But then, what is to be expected? Leeds have to make a sale
this summer to deal with not being promoted to the Premier League. It didn’t
matter that they have signed a big sponsorship deal with Red Bull, who now own
part of the club. Whether letting Gray go is a consequence of losses or the
English Football League’s profit and loss system, there is no better way of
fixing either situation than selling an academy-grown player.
So, Leeds fan Archie Gray will likely leave, probably to
play Premier League football, having been in tears on the pitch when Leeds lost
the play-off final at Wembley in May. Celtic fan Eddie will be in his customary
seat in the stands at Elland Road next season, almost certainly without a
family member to watch — although Gray’s brother Harry is regarded as a player
of some potential in Leeds’s academy.
But what will the hope there be? Will it be any different if
Harry makes his debut?
With Archie, realistically, the vultures would have circled
at some point. Leeds might not have been a Championship carcass beyond this
coming season, but as a lower-end Premier League side, they would still have
been a casualty to any ‘Big Six’ birds of prey wanting to swoop. Leeds in the
Premier League might have got another season out of Gray before having to sell
him. They might even have got two. But they would either have fallen to the
profit and sustainability regulations (PSR), selling on a homegrown prospect to
fund a series of amortised signings and a tilt at the Europa League, or Gray’s
own ambitions.
As a player of serious potential, Gray was never going to be
happy forever without challenging at the top end of the game. It’s hard to see
a route to that for a club such as Leeds. And that’s the difference between
Gray in 2024 and the Grays of the 1960s and 1970s. When Eddie arrived at Leeds
in 1965, Leeds were only four years removed from fighting relegation to the
third tier. In the season in which he made his debut, Leeds finished second in
the top flight and got to the semi-finals of the Fairs Cup, a precursor to the
Europa League. By 1969, they were league champions and by 1975 they had reached
the European Cup final. Could anyone have realistically pictured Leeds as they
are today reaching the Champions League final by 2033?
Gray’s anticipated departure costs fans one, maybe two extra
seasons of watching a very talented kid who sang along with Marching on
Together. From the club’s perspective, a season or two in the Premier League
probably doubles his transfer fee. It’s the romance of the game that will be
leaving with Gray; the idea that he could have played alongside his brother
Harry, as Eddie did with Frank.
Archie himself hoped for that: “I wouldn’t tell him this
myself, but it’s my dream to play with Harry one day.” Or there’s the idea that
Gray could have been there for 15 years, pushing Leeds, making the club grow
around him, as Don Revie’s boys did as they developed.
This might be too soon to mourn his loss forever. After all,
he is a third-generation Gray, and his line has all left Leeds and then come
back. Grandpa Frank did, as did his dad Andy. And at least 49ers Enterprises
have learned a lesson about fan sentiment, given the reaction to his mooted
move to Brentford on Saturday night. Football, though, seems to have moved past
players like Gray developing and staying — primarily — with one club. Just see
the PSR deals taking place in the Premier League. The accounts don’t allow for
it.
The sadness of Gray’s exit is very much a case of what might
have been. But what might have been when it comes to that footballing dream, a
homegrown star taking pride of place on the pitch, increasingly feels like it
belongs to a different generation.