• last month
Latest on the free agent hunt at Elland Road with the YEP's chief football writer Graham Smyth and Leeds United reporter Joe Donnohue
Transcript
00:00What he wants is someone who not only can cover the CDM role but also potentially centre-half,
00:12somebody with experience, somebody who accepts that actually you're here in a supporting
00:16role and you're not here to be the main man. You are looking at a very, very small pool
00:21of players, really, really small, and it's still very much up in the air as to whether
00:29they'll do something. I mean, Farke is cautiously optimistic. He almost said he hoped to get
00:32something done in a few days, didn't he? And then set a deadline of, you know, a hard deadline
00:37of November, because if you haven't done it by November, essentially what's the point?
00:41Because they're probably not going to be much fit till December, mid-December. But he's
00:47supposed to be back in January, then you start to think, well, you know, what was the point
00:50in spending the money? So it does need to happen sooner rather than later. I kind of
00:54wish it had happened already, to be honest.
00:56You know, this is not somebody who's going to be coming in on probably anything longer
01:01than a deal until the end of the season, or at least that's probably what Leeds will be
01:04wanting. Yeah, it has to be someone who fits the criteria, fits into the mould of the squad.
01:11And also, I think a big one is financially it has to make sense as well. It makes very
01:16little sense to have banged on about finding the right deal for Leeds United on transfers
01:22all summer to then, you know, make a former Premier League player or, you know, a former
01:28European player who's played in Europe's top five leagues, who's without a club now, you
01:32know, making them one of your top earners because you're desperate. You know, it has
01:36to be a deal which makes fiscal sense from a Leeds perspective as well. And Leeds' need
01:41is very obvious. If you were a representative of a player who is available, you know, and
01:46there are very few of them who are available, suitable for Leeds at the moment, you'd not
01:50be doing a very good job by your client if you weren't going into that negotiation and
01:54trying to get the best deal possible, and maybe trying to play on that vulnerability
01:59that Leeds have at the moment. So it's not as straightforward as going, he's without
02:04a club, right, sign. But you can definitely see why it makes sense to take that gamble,
02:11even if they play very limited minutes.

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