No two relegations are ever the same but problems that dogged last season's Premier League bottom three might help explain why Leeds United are not rushing their summer recruitment.
Social media is brutal for football clubs at this time of year. Almost regardless of who the club is, what they did last season and how many signings they've got through the door already, the response to anything they say is invariably the same - do more. Do more now. Sign some players. Who's next? Whether it's a by-product of the minute-by-minute transfer reporting industry that has sprung up around the actual business of recruitment, making fans feel like every club but their own is busy making signings, or just a sign of the times and our desire to have everything at our fingertips right now, this is arguably the least forgiving period in the football calendar. At Leeds, where everything 49ers Enterprises do is underpinned by a determination to do everything as quietly and discreetly as possible, any void can quickly become filled with angst.
For most clubs the summer recruitment work began months ago and the back end of June is when they start to finalise deals or make decisions on which of their shortlisted players they can actually get in. The start of July is when things start to ramp up. For Leeds, last summer, it wasn't until August that they really put the puzzle together. At the heart of their transfer plan was a willingness to be patient because the players who were available earlier on in the window were very obtainable but not necessarily the most desirable. The difference makers, Leeds felt, might just become available later on. Largie Ramazani arrived on August 22. Manor Solomon was signed on August 27. Ao Tanaka joined three days later.
Leeds’ transfer urgency
This summer is different, obviously, because the demands of the Premier League are so much higher. A newly-promoted Championship squad cannot be expected to hold the fort, points wise, until the cavalry arrives with two or three games gone. Daniel Farke wanted his new faces in as early as possible during pre-season, with good reason. A bad start can be hard to recover from. So there is more urgency to Leeds' summer recruitment this year than there was last year. They've got two in already, including their priority defensive signing Jaka Bijol. Other deals are in the works but at this stage there is currently no movement expected until next week, which is not sitting well with sections of the fanbase. The metaphor of a duck - sailing calmly and apparently without effort on the water but kicking like billy-o under the surface to get to where it needs to - has been mentioned behind the scenes, not for the first time in recent transfer windows. It makes sense but is not one that floats easily with Leeds fans at this time of year.
But there has to be balance. The need to get things right has to dictate too, more so even than the need to get players in quickly. And a glance at last season's drop zone, even if all three cases had their own unique series of unfortunate events, highlights just how little room there will be for errors in recruitment. All three stories send Leeds a respective message about summer decision making, from beyond the Premier League 2024/25 grave.
What Leicester did in the summer haunted them all season and may do for some time yet. On Friday morning, a full 68 days after their relegation was confirmed and just 44 days prior to the start of the Championship season, they parted ways with manager Ruud van Nistelrooy.
"Leicester's decline has been in the making for some time," said Rob Tanner, who covers Leicester for The Athletic. "An overspend on contracts and transfer fees at a time when revenue was affected by the pandemic led to PSR issues that have hung around the club's neck for the last three years. Last summer they were powerless to prevent Enzo Maresca leaving for Chelsea but then appointed Steve Cooper, who was a very different character, and gave him a £80 million transfer kitty, £50m net.
"That money was poorly spent as only one recruit, Bilal El Khannouss, made a consistent impact on the first team and when they decided to sack Cooper after just 12 games, his replacement, van Nistelrooy, could not be backed in the January window. The club's approach to recruitment has been a mess for several years."
Alfie House writes about Southampton for The Daily Echo and his summary of Saints' summer sins is certainly a cautionary tale that Leeds have taken note of. He told the YEP: "They bought players who didn't have the physicality or athleticism to play in the Premier League." And getting off on the wrong foot in the window left them chasing their tails and compounding those mistakes when the season started to take a turn for the worse.
"Passing straight to the opposition striker, passing straight to the opposition midfielders, running straight into the opposition defenders, shooting straight at the opposition goalie," said House. "Changing the team too much after each bad result. Changing the playing style of the team too much after each bad manager."
Stuart Watson, chief football writer for the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star, watched Ipswich Town earn back-to-back promotions and end a 22-year top flight exile before the party came to an abrupt halt in the Premier League. The way they spent their £100m summer war chest has been one of the sticks to beat them with, even if the fuller context might prompt more sympathy than Leicester or Saints could ask for.
"They did very little business in the Championship season, so they arrived in the Premier League with essentially the core of their League One squad," he told the YEP. "Granted, that was really a Championship squad that was built in League One, but they had to do business to stand any sort of chance. And let's be honest, £100m in today's market doesn't get you an awful lot, does it, which sounds crazy to say."
Ipswich’s ‘Leeds 2020 Plan A’ problem
Where Leeds might learn from the Tractor Boys is in what Ipswich did not get in the summer window. Remember when Leeds said they were going for 'the cream of the Championship' as they plotted recruitment for the top flight return in 2020 and then went in a completely different, European direction? Well Ipswich gave Leeds' initial plan a real go.
"They tried to strike the right balance between retaining the core of the team that had got them there, that was built on spirit and togetherness and team chemistry, but also being mindful that they needed to add to it and upgrade," said Watson. "I think it was 12 players they signed in the summer transfer window and there's a lot of hindsight at play here, but the accusation that came was that they didn't sign enough Premier League experience. If you look at the bulk of the business they did, it was all sort of top end Championship Players, people like Jacob Greaves, who was in the Championship Team of the Year for Hull, Jack Clark, who'd been a star player for Sunderland, Sammie Szmodics, who was top goal scorer in the Championship the previous season for Blackburn. Ultimately that leads to the accusation that if you sign Championship players, that's where you're going to end up returning to.
"I interviewed the chairman Mark Ashton at the back end of the season and put that to him. He pointed out that knowing you need experience is one thing and being able to add it is another. He said a lot of experienced Premier League players aren't willing to agree to relegation wage reduction clauses and he wasn't prepared to take that risk and potentially put the club in financial jeopardy going forward. I don't think you can argue with that."
Leeds know all about the ways in which you can try and mitigate the financial perils of relegation. But chairman Paraag Marathe and club sources have been keen to make clear that the relegation loan exit clauses that dogged the club following their relegation are a thing of the past.
Ipswich did get some Premier League experience, in the form of Kalvin Phillips, but it simply didn't work out for the Leeds lad. Fitness issues robbed him of a chance to make a material difference to the plight of his loan club. So even if you do go and get 'top flight ready' talent there is still no guarantee that it will be the right deal or the right player.
What we know of Leeds' transfer plans so far should offer some reassurance to fans that Southampton's mistake of not getting enough physicality to be able to cope with the elite athleticism found in the Premier League is not one that will be repeated by the Whites. But the challenge will be to avoid the pitfalls that did for Leicester and Ipswich, at least in part. What the remainder of a significant body of recruitment needs to give Farke is Premier League quality, size, strength and legs. Experience of the English top flight also looks increasingly vital. It's a complicated task with myriad difficulties. As Tanner puts it so ominously: "Leeds can’t afford to make any mistakes this summer, in both recruitment and leadership because the gulf is growing between the Premier League and the Championship. There is almost a whole new division developing between the two."
It doesn't all have to happen right now, in the last weekend of June because buy in haste, repent at leisure. It just has to happen soon and when it does happen it has to be absolutely right.
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