Most of my readers are most used to my data centric articles, however I’m going for something a little different today.
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In this transfer window we have seen a lot of pretty big moves in certain teams, the obvious one is Aston Villa. So far they have spent £35mil on Emi Buendia, £30mil on Leon Bailey & £30mil on Danny Ings.
These are all very good signings, both Buendia & Bailey are just about to hit their peak years and have a lot of talent, both have resale value. Danny Ings, while not having resale value has been one of standout goalscorers in the Premier League for the last two seasons with 40 goal contributions(34 Goals & 6 Assists) in 67 Premier League appearances and his value to Villa is obvious.
On top of the above talents they are still rumoured to be heavily into making more improvements with Axel Tuanzebe & Todd Cantwell being their next rumoured targets.
Next you have Crystal Palace, they were in need of a major rebuild with many of their ageing stars being released on free transfers. Many considered this job a very difficult one, however the signings they’ve made have been shrewd.
So far they have signed Marc Guehi from Chelsea who stood out last year for Swansea in the championship, Joachim Anderson from Olympique Lyon who stood out on loan for Fulham last year despite their relegation, Michael Olise from Reading who has been a serious talent in Championship with 19 goal contributions last season, they also got Connor Galagher on loan which was a player we were interested in.
Crystal Palace aren’t done yet either with Reiss Nelson, Arnaud Danjuma & Adam Armstrong. Armstrong and Danjuma in particular had standout seasons in championship, Danjuma with 22 goal contributions & Armstrong with 33. They are trying to fill their squad with the cream of the championship which is something we famously said after we were promoted, before we changed tact and saw the value in transfers from Europe.
These clubs have many Leeds United fans concerned that we are being left behind by rivals, with us only making two first team signings, in Junior Firpo & Kristoffer Klaesson. Also only one of these is expected to be a regular first team player with Klaesson being the expected backup goalkeeper to the Iceman Illan Meslier, who we all should agree isn’t likely to be usurped any time soon.
However there are still a lot of teams who are in similar positions to us and some even worse. Newcastle United for instance haven’t made any signings to this date with the new season beginning in just over a week. Burnley have only made one new signing with Nathan Collins joining them from Stoke City.
Another club even further up the table who haven’t really impressed is Everton, they have so far signed Demerai Gray, Andros Townsend & Asmir Begovic. None of these are signings which scare me and make me feel like they are leaving us behind.
Wolves have made a few signings but none with big outlays including Jose Sa from Olympiakos who is replacing the outgoing Rui Patricio. They’ve also signed Yerson Mosquera from Columbia & Bendeguz Bola from Hungary. The only new signing I’m impressed with from Wolves is Francisco Trincao from Barcelona on loan. So once again another team who haven't been overly impressive so far.
Further up the table we have seen Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal & Man Utd make some big moves spending 100’s of millions between them with more expected. But then we have Tottenham, widely expected to potentially be losing their Talisman in Harry Kane and as yet have only made one new signing in Bryan Gil, who was part of a swap deal with Erik Lamela going the other way.
Then at the bottom end of the table there have been a number of new signings for the newly promoted teams, however these signings are expected as they try to bring up the quality of their squad to try to stay in the division and not immediately relegated back to the championship and non of their signings are ones that I’m too concerned about.
The clubs left to discuss are Leicester, Liverpool, Brighton & West Ham. Firstly Leicester have made some strong signings with Patson Daka & Boubakary Soumare signing, Soumare especially is a player I would love to see under Bielsa, however Leicester were expected to make big moves finishing in a european place.
Liverpool’s window has been surprisingly light so far only signing Ibrahima Konate from RB Leipzig, they would probably be expected to make some more before the end of the window.
Following Liverpool we have West Ham who have only signed Alphonse Areola on loan from PSG while this is an impressive signing as he did impress last year, they are probably expected to be a lot busier than they have been.
Lastly we have our positional rivals Brighton & Hove Albion who have so far sold Ben White to Arsenal for £50mil, they have made two signings Enock Mwepu from RB Leipzig & Jkell Scherpen from Ajax. Mwepu is a promising signing and one to be excited over, however Scherpen is only expected to be a backup GK behind the impressive Spaniard Robert Sanchez.
After you break down the whole window so far, we aren’t that far away from most of the rest of the division. Aston Villa are able to spend so much due to a combination of them having billionaire owners & having just today confirmed the sale of their Talisman Jack Grealish for £100mil to Manchester City.
More on Aston Villa, their business while impressive still includes the sale of a player who has been centric to everything they do well. Replacing a player of Grealish’s quality isn’t easy, especially when you rely on him as much as they did.
It should be said that they will probably cope pretty well, I rate Emi Buendia very highly and feel he could fill the void left by Grealish but no doubt Dean Smith will need to make some tactical changes to accommodate these new players and this may be more challenging than anticipated. However I feel he is a good enough manager to accomplish this.
There are still many weeks left of the transfer window with 25 days remaining, there have been many reasons why less transfers have been accomplished. With many international competitions happening which will obviously disrupt usual transfer dealings with the Euros, Copa America & most recently the Olympics.
We will see an extremely busy final month of the transfer window with players becoming available all the time as players recruit pushing others to fringes. Like we saw last year, Victor Orta never expected Raphinha to become available, but then he did and we picked it up for a bargain price.
Naturally many people are very worried that we won’t recruit and this is the same every window, while it’s been made clear by Phil Hay that we won’t have another £100mil window like last summer, we haven’t so far spent a lot of money with £26mil being spent so far on first team players with a little more spent on U23’s players also. I would expect us to still spent between £30-40mil on a couple more players.
It seems very likely we will sign Lewis O’Brien from Huddersfield Town, this also has been a divisive issue for Leeds United supporters with many being underwhelmed with this signing. I can understand that, after the likes of Rodrigo de Paul, Nahitan Nandez & many other rumours we are now signing a lad from down the road?
To that I would say have faith, Victor Orta knows what he is doing. He will have scouted O’Brien very thoroughly and will know the role he wants him to play. Then we have our genius coach Marcelo going out to watch him, so you would imagine he also approves of the transfer.
Phil Hay has mentioned we will be on the lookout for opportunities later in the window including one for a winger to compliment our wide options, it is expected this will be a right footed option with all of our other wingers being left footed.
We have been linked with many wingers in this window, the most likely of the linked players seems to be Noa Lang. However it wouldn’t surprise me if the player we end up going for hasn’t been linked to us at all.
I think I’ve listed a great many reasons why I’m not worried about this season like many of our fans. However I’ve not listed the greatest reason of them all.
My faith in Marcelo Bielsa, there isn’t a person I believe in more than Marcelo. With what he has accomplished with this squad these last three seasons I have the utmost faith in him to continue getting more out of this squad.
If we look back to his time in the championship, he had a phenomenal debut season nearly getting us promoted but dropping in the last months to only end up with Playoff’s to play for which as we know ended badly. However the following season he was even more impressive, and let's face it he didn’t really make any massive changes to the squad, Ben White was the main incoming replacement for Pontus Jansson and then Helder Costa who didn’t have an impressive season all things considered.
We also lost Kemar Roofe meaning he relied pretty much entirely on Patrick Bamford with some brief flirtations with Eddie Nketiah who ended up going back home to London. Yet despite this he blew away the division comfortably taking us up as champions.
Is it too unreasonable to think that he will replicate this in the Premier League? Not being champions(Although I wouldn’t turn that down) Why is it beyond Marcelo to improve on last season and look to challenge for Europe.
Marcelo isn’t a man to do things without reason, he has a goal for this squad and what other goal could he have but European football? If he thought the best this squad could do was mid table mediocrity would he have continued in Yorkshire? Is he that unambitious?
No one could know the answer to the above questions but Marcelo, and considering he on occasion speaks in more riddles than Gandalf the Grey I doubt we will get the answer to that question anytime soon.
Either way to answer, am I worried about Leeds United this year? The answer is a resounding no.
Thanks for reading.
Martin Riley
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