Leeds moved early in the window and brought in ten new players, but the lack of attacking stardust and a limp deadline day have left supporters frustrated and Daniel Farke with a thinner squad than he wanted.
Leeds United’s summer transfer window ended with a familiar sense of frustration. Ten players arrived at a cost of more than £100 million, but they are functional rather than special, and when deadline day passed Leeds had still failed to add any stardust to their squad and Daniel Farke’s repeated calls for an extra attacking options went unanswered. For many supporters, it felt like history repeating itself: promises of ambition followed by a failure to deliver in the moments that mattered most.
The club talked about having prepared for 6 months and spending every penny available, but when the dust settled Leeds had not even filled their 25-man squad, key attacking targets had slipped away, and deadline day ended in a scramble that produced nothing. Fans were left questioning how, after three months of the transfer window, the squad still looks light in the very area the manager had highlighted all summer.
The final disappointment came in the last few hours of the window. Leeds pushed hard for Fulham’s Harry Wilson, even submitting a deal sheet, but the move fell apart as Fulham juggled multiple transfers. Evans, the club’s managing director, admitted it was a near miss. “We had a player targeted and this didn’t come through. We thought we had the right price. We put the offer in above that price, the player was on board. Fulham couldn’t get it done… Whether it was out of time or they just decided not to sell, we don’t know, but it didn’t happen.”
So desperate were Leeds to bring someone in that it’s said they even turned to Gustavo Hamer late on, but Sheffield United saw the situation and stood firm on their valuation. Had Leeds moved for Hamer earlier in the window, when the pressure wasn’t so high, it is surely a deal they could have secured with relative ease. But that was the story of the summer, despite good early business, many felt like Leeds failed to move decisively on key targets. Something you can’t say of rivals like Sunderland.
Deadline day capped off a window where Leeds were left short on several priority targets. Igor Paixao, Bilal El Khannouss and Facundo Buonanotte were all pursued but ultimately slipped away. Evans defended the work done, claiming that Leeds had landed their first-choice signings across the board. “Every single player we signed was our top choice. Nobody moved to different clubs we wanted more than the guys we got.” For supporters watching the likes of Paixao and Buonanotte end up elsewhere, that statement rang hollow.
Evans’ summary of the summer was blunt: “Our headline for ourselves is a bad day at the end of a good window.” He argued that Leeds had done their most important business early and that one more attacker would have been a “cherry on top” rather than the foundation of the window. Yet Farke himself warned publicly before deadline day that survival would be difficult without reinforcements in the final third, and the club’s failure to provide them leaves an obvious question mark.
On finances, Evans insisted there was nothing left in the tank. “Yes. Unequivocally, we are maxing PSR out this season. This summer, we spent everything we could.” He explained that chasing more expensive players earlier in the summer would have meant losing key figures from last season’s promotion side. The claim may be true, but it does little to ease fears that Leeds are entering the season without enough creativity or depth in attack.
Evans accepted that Wilson, had he arrived, would have offered a missing piece. “A set-piece-taking, inside of wing, No 10 type is the one thing we’re still sort of missing, and we’d love to have that to just sort of round out the entire summer.” Instead, Leeds go into the season with Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Lukas Nmecha and Joel Piroe as their main options, all capable on their day but with injury records and consistency issues that offer no guarantees.
The club’s position is clear: they believe the work done early outweighs the failure to strengthen late on. “The 24 guys we woke up with yesterday versus the 25 we could have had will probably only incrementally change our odds long term in our goal of staying up,” Evans said. But for a fanbase that has seen Leeds flirt with disaster too many times before, the margins feel far finer than that. The frustration is only heightened by the fact Leeds did not even fill their 25-man squad, choosing to let players like Largie Ramazani and Patrick Bamford leave for no return and without securing replacements.
It leaves the squad looking thin, and supporters are left to wonder whether the gamble will prove costly. Daniel Farke said after the Newcastle game that it would be 'difficult' for Leeds United to survive in the Premier League if they didn’t strengthen their attack before the transfer deadline. The question now is, does Daniel Farke have enough in his squad to survive until January?