Leeds United transfer window Q&A part 1 — Club chief on Daniel Farke future, attacking investment & 'helpful' Pascal Struijk decision — YEP 11/9/26

By Kyle Newbould

Part one of Leeds United managing director Robbie Evans’ post-transfer window Q&A session.

Leeds United managing director Robbie Evans insists the working relationship between himself, other key decision-makers and Daniel Farke has ‘never been better’ as talks continue over the manager’s future.

Farke welcomed a total of seven first-team players into his squad across the summer, with close to £90million spent and the club’s transfer record broken on James Trafford. Two deadline day arrivals were announced when Melvin Bard and Jean-Matteo Bahoya joined on loan from OGC Nice and Eintracht Frankfurt respectively.

The Leeds boss is into the final year of his Elland Road contract, however, and has dodged recent questions over his future, instead pointing to more immediate points of focus like upcoming games or transfers. With that in mind, managing director Evans sat down with local media to answer questions on a wide range of topics. This is part one of that Q&A.

So the window, how successful was it? Bearing in mind last year it was "good window, bad deadline day," I think was the phrase, wasn't it?

Robbie Evans, MD: I think last year the phrase was we had a good window and a bad deadline. I would say this summer was a good window and a good deadline. The key for us is we had a couple of top objectives to accomplish, and those all got done early, in terms of left-footed centre half, inverted right winger, and a goalkeeper. And from there, having signed our top targets on all three of those positions, we were able to go and pursue roles around the pitch to make us better and stronger, and have time to do so. So we're quite satisfied with the window.

I must say I’m a little concerned by how optimistic the fans might be, because I don't think that last summer, when the window closed, had been as perhaps as bad as folks thought it was. And this summer, the real proof will be a year from now looking back. Hopefully people have reasonable expectations, as we are certainly aspirational but the Premier League is always challenging.

So we're quite content, I'm very proud of how the team worked this summer. Adam and Daniel worked well every day and did a wonderful job, with constant coordination and constant collaboration. Alex Davies, Hannah Cox, the whole team, Paraag of course, I was very proud of how we worked and what we got done. On balance, it was a very good summer for us.

You said you fulfilled some of those main targets early on, which is great. Overall, do you feel that you fulfilled the rest of the remit when it came to targets?

RE: Yeah, we filled all the key roles to fill. The current debate is around how much to go on depth, right? I'm guessing that most of the questions out there now, and before deadline day, were on a fourth full-back or a third striker and things like that.

That's where the constant collaboration with Daniel was critical. We filled the roles we felt were key to fill, at the right sort of fit as far as squad fit, character fit, long-term financial commitment, that kind of thing. We're very pleased by how we've taken on the summer and with the squad, broadly speaking. I think we'd all love more depth and that sounds great in theory, but in practice it's hard to find the right fits in every single role, especially finding guys who can come in, be content not starting. but also be good enough to play, and also not get in the way of a long-term plan. In the end, the squad we came out with is a really good fit for our goals this season and for our goals long-term.

Striker pursuit and attacking investment

The pursuit of another main striker. How much were you limited, or how close were you to getting a third one in?

RE: The phrase "main striker" is critical here, in terms of discussing a striker or the other possible backup roles. There was no desire at all this summer to find a striker who was going to compete with or take over for Dominic’s spot. It was never going to be a number-one striker this summer for us. I know there was talk about adding a striker back in January and that's a different topic. But as of this summer, it would have been a supporting role only.

As noted earlier, supporting roles are quite hard to fill because you have to have this sort of Venn diagram overlapping the right character fit, the right squad fit, the right price, and someone genuinely content to be a backup or at least fight for their spot. Because if someone comes in thinking they're going to start and then they're not, they're going to be a problem in the dressing room, which was a huge part of our success last season. The number of players who are good enough to play in the league, willing to fight for their spot or be a backup, a good fit to our target profile and style of play and worth a long-term commitment financially, is a very, very small list.

For example, some of the names or rumours out there were players that would not want that role, and we were not going to pursue them to come in and be unhappy on day one. I won't comment on what other teams have done, but I'd say in general, whether it's the left-back role or it's the supporting winger role or it's the striker role, those are always tricky. And so that's why we held out and kept them open longer.

In the end, I think we have a pretty good solution with our current squad, and we're two deep at striker depth with the guys we have. Even when you look at Manchester City, Erling Haaland doesn't really have a backup. Everton’s got one true striker. We have two, and we'd all love more, but those players come at a cost in terms of minutes, in terms of dressing room, in terms of SCR. In the end, we were pretty content with the group we've got.

In early June, with a lot of plates still spinning, a lot up in the air, the general feeling was that the bulk of investment might be in attack over defence, because you had a good backline, very good midfield. So are you content that remained the case and was executed, or did that strategy pivot into more investment at the back?

RE: I think our expectation coming into summer was to be a bit more attack-heavy. At that time, there was still some hope that Pascal Struijk would stay and then he decided he wanted to leave, which is a different topic. We also recognised the entire time that signing a player like James Trafford would be very, very challenging. If you end up getting him in, that changes the financial weighting of your summer.

Then there were a couple of targets at the sort of left wing, loose wing spot that we didn't get in, Julian Brandt being well a publicised example. The final mix depends on who's there in the market, who's a good fit, and by the end of the summer there was a pretty small list of names that were signed off by both Daniel and the sporting department on the winger roles.

In the end, we got our top target right wing in, in Harry, we got that done early and then got a really high upside signing left winger in Jean-Matteo. That's about what we thought would happen as far as filling the various roles: Two wingers was most likely. We were prepared to also get a striker in, but it didn't feel probable to get all three of those in given the challenges mentioned earlier. In terms of filling squad roles, it ended up similar to what we had discussed with Daniel back in May.

As an aside, part of the challenge for me in these conversations is always how people look at the fees when they debate whether we are putting more money here or there. What does the free count as? Where do wages enter the picture? What does the loan count as? Jean-Matteo's transaction, if completed, is still a pretty sizable transaction. But in the moment, people might count it as a "loan only."

My view is that we brought in two players who are each worth eight figures, but they might look like “a free and a loan”. We missed out on some other big names, there is no point in hiding that, but we ended up with two wingers, to the original question about investing in attack, and also ended up replacing Pascal with Tarik and adding James Trafford, both premium signings which led us to adjusting the other adds around them.

Pascal Struijk sale and Tarik Muharemovic signing

Can we talk about Pascal and his exit? Because from the outside, it was a slight surprise that you needed to sell to meet the PSR limit. Can you just explain a bit about that situation?

RE: Sure. To be honest, I was a bit surprised at how confident some people were that we were far clear of PSR last summer, because I said back in September that we had, I think the word was “unequivocally” maxed PSR out.

You never quite know how you are going to end up on PSR, or SCR for that matter, until the season is over because your financials are constantly evolving, but I was pretty confident coming into the year that we would have to sell some guys in June. Frankly, it was the cup run, the 14th place finish and doing pretty minimal work in January that kept it to being just one player. Last August, we were prepared for it to be two players if needed because the goal was, go as hard as you have to go to build the best possible squad to survive. That was a risk we took on last summer. So we knew that was going to be a possible issue in June, depending on the outcome of the season. Pascal was the solution for that.

As for the outside view, I think sometimes the sort of general reporting in the public of where teams are, versus the PSR standard is a little off, and those differences are hugely impactful. Being off by 5 million one way or the other is a huge difference. For example: Being 5 million over can be the profits from a whole additional player sale netting out the sell-ons and the agent fees and the book value such, whereas 5 million under once you’re into June is plenty clear. These things go on fine margins where even 1 million or 2 million in a certain direction might swing the outcome.

And how helpful was it that, as we gathered, Pascal made his intention clear early, so you were able to go in for Tarik and fill that hole pretty sharply?

RE: Pascal's appeal to other teams was clear before the year was over. He was debating going or not, and he was helpful in deciding pretty quickly so we could decide to sell him before June 30th. We were prepared for that possibility all season; we did tons of work on left centre half last year, probably the most work of any position in the entire pitch, just in case he left. Once we knew he was leaving, we began the work on the replacement even before he was gone. Having that news early was helpful, but we had, like always, various contingencies for Pascal, just as we do for other players. It presented a solution to our PSR problem that he wanted to go even if it created a hole to fill, which became Tarik.

On Tarik, experience has always been talked about as one of the big attributes of a lot of the signings since the 49ers came into control. He's only had one season of top-flight football. So what was it that you saw in him, based on a very small sample size, that he was worth such a big investment?

RE: The phrase I think you heard last summer was "raise the floor. This summer it was, "raise the ceiling” and also get younger. It was less a focus on players who played loads of minutes in top-five leagues, and more about players that have both the quality now, but also the quality to go even to the next level. Between Daniel, the staff, Alex, and Adam, the view on Tarik was simply that he has a really high level already, but also he has even more to give, and so he's worth the investment.

We did also add experience, in the Elvedi, Bard and Wilson types. So we added both, and in key positions of need this summer we got better, hopefully for a longer period of time than last summer. We have had this planned out for a while as we fully recognized that last summer, when you're only buying 27-year-olds, it's not a long, long-term solution. Someone like Tarik gives you a significantly longer runway to build the squad and build your levels and improve over time.

Was it a key policy this summer to even out the age of the squad a little bit? That was something in mind?

RE: Yes. We knew we were very veteran-heavy last summer, and that was intentional. That felt like the best way to get experience at the right price. That was a very deliberate strategy. But we do have to evolve towards being younger going forward, though at the same time, we don't believe in getting younger for younger's sake. Just signing young players who won't play doesn't make you actually any better long-term; we have to get younger and better, hence the sort of investment in top prospects with experience and production, like Tarik and James in particular, but also Jean-Matteo. That mix of getting better while getting younger was the goal, but it's very hard to do. There's probably only one to three achievable targets at any given position that can do that for you, so it was critical to land our top targets in those roles.

Squad depth and Farke contract talks

Daniel made eight changes to his team against Chelsea, but there was still a lot of experience in the squad at top-flight, whether it be from the Premier League or across Europe. Was that something you still had a lot of focus on? And how happy are you with how the squad's been built in that aspect?

RE: I think our team has loads of experience with a combination of last year's team plus bringing in players like Harry, Nico, and Melvin this season. It wasn't the top priority to add more experience as we had so much already, but certainly the view is either to bring players in that have youth and upside, or to bring a veteran like that has been proving it across top five leagues at a reasonable price. Especially in roles like Nico's and Melvin's, it's helpful to have the confidence of them having played 100-plus games, sometimes far more than that, in a top five league already.

So to answer your question, I'm not sure it was a core part of the strategy, but it was part of the profile in those rotational roles: A more veteran sort of profile versus signing a player, for example, who is a more speculative add from a smaller league. Dropping that more inexperienced or raw player into the rotation in an emergency or due to an injury in the Premier League is a lot to ask.

Daniel is very much at the heart, as you say, closes things out, very much involved. Where are you at with regards to his future, from the club's point of view? What can you say?

RE: First and foremost, Daniel's done a fantastic job here, and we're thrilled with the last couple seasons. We want to keep it going, keep building the long-term project. And so we were trying to find a solution with him long-term. It's also important to note for our supporters that the ongoing operating relationship between Daniel and Adam and myself has never been better. The level of collaboration and coordination this summer was truly excellent. Getting our top targets in, talking every day, it’s a testament to Adam and Daniel both. I know some might fear that a deal not being done might cause things to fall apart behind the scenes, but it’s actually been the opposite of that. They're really, really strong right now and delivering at a very, very high level.

As far as the contract discussions themselves, Daniel and I, Daniel's team and I, have had really good chats for the last three months and we're all on the same page as far as what we want to accomplish, the long-term project. We simply haven't got the deal done yet, but we're working towards a solution. I think, again, as broader context for people, extensions might feel like they are relatively straightforward, because you're both at the same company already, but I think them as being quite difficult, even more than first-time signings, because unlike signing him back in '23 or doing a deadline day deal, the time pressure is far reduced. We have the time to get it right as far as what he wants and what we want, and to deliver on that long-term project. I know it feels like it's taking a long time, but, you know, Ethan's deal took over a year to get done. We tried to get it done last spring, and then last summer, and then last fall, and then in January, and it wasn't done until June. Similarly the Rodon, Bogle, Aaronson deals, all those guys took months to finish.

I wouldn’t read into it taking us some time as a problem. It just means we're trying to get it right, because we have time to get it right. As long as we're still operating together as a group I'm not worried, and we're doing great on that front. So that's the long answer. And the short answer is that he's done great, we want him to be here long-term, and we're working on it. And when there's news, we'll share it with you.

I think it's fair to read into that then, Robbie, that there's no major diversions into policy or where you see the club going, or he's pretty attuned?

RE: No. I think that we have a great operating model, and we want to keep that going. We all know how to best work together. We did it all summer and last year, and the vision would be to keep on operating in a similar fashion going forward.