“I think I’d probably give us a B+ if I was to grade the window in terms of what we wanted to do.”

Leeds United chief executive Angus Kinnear appeared on The Square Ball podcast this week, discussing Red Bull, profit and sustainability rules, yellow kits, stadium plans, and this summer’s transfer window.

Transfer chat dominated this summer at Leeds United, so there was plenty for Kinnear to shed light on. Pre-season began with Archie Gray’s sale to Tottenham, which caused something of an online meltdown among many Leeds fans, myself included.

“If you look at our overall PSR picture, we did need to make sales across the window,” says Kinnear. “Archie is very valuable from a PSR perspective because he’s an academy product, so there is no amortisation, there’s no book value to him at all.”

Kinnear did confirm that it didn’t need to be Gray who was sold, and that Leeds didn’t need to sell before June 30th, but that was the date that Gray’s release clause expired:

“There was always going to be somebody who was a sacrificial lamb for that cause, and Archie is the obvious one because he’s come through the academy. So, he’s pure profit from a PSR point of view.”

If not Archie, then who?

“It could have been Pascal, or it could have been Willy, or it could have been Max Wober.”

Hmm, one of those is not like the others, Angus. It was pointed out to Kinnear that the action of selling Gray spoke louder than the words of Leeds chairman Paraag Marathe, who told The Athletic in May that the Red Bull commercial partnership “could be the difference between saving a player from being sold or signing a player”. Questioned on Marathe’s messaging, Kinnear says:

“I think there was a reality which you probably don’t want to call out just after you’ve failed in the play-offs, that some big players are going to have to leave.”

There is some sense in that, even if it’s hard for us as fans to see the ownership’s rationale at the time. The constant analysis of the club’s position with regards to Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) was energy sapping, and the way in which Kinnear spoke about Gray as “pure profit” unintentionally adds a sinister element to the transfer market. Players are assets more than they’re people now and the daft rules put in place tend to incentivise clubs to part with players whose emotional attachment is greatest, their academy graduates.

But Kinnear is optimistic about Gray’s replacement, Jayden Bogle:

“We think we’ve been able to get a right-back that will be able to perform this season at the same level as Archie Gray for an eighth of the value that we generated for Archie.”

I can see where he’s coming from. Bogle has almost 200 professional games under his belt, all played in the Championship or Premier League. While Archie’s ceiling is much, much higher, Bogle offers more attacking threat, and his experience should help carry Leeds that little bit closer to promotion. In theory, at least. Only time will tell.

More expectation will be placed on Bogle’s shoulders than Archie ever faced. We watched on in wonder as Gray played most weeks with the poise of a Championship veteran and the mischief of a future England international. We expect Bogle to step up and be (almost) faultless as Leeds chase a promotion they desperately need. It’s not the romantic Gray dynasty continuation story, but another stark reminder of Leeds’ position in football’s food chain.

Speaking of which, Crysencio Summerville: “I think we expected Cree to leave,” says Kinnear. “He’d made [clear] his intention that he wanted to leave, and we thought he would get a move.” Yep, sounds about right. Nothing else was said about Summerville, which perhaps indicates that it was obvious the Championship Player of the Year would leave a club that failed to achieve promotion.

I can stomach the Summerville deal, especially given that it felt he was never likely to stay, nor did he want to. An adequate replacement should have been lined up well before he left the club at the end of July, but that’s not the way it worked out. At least we still had Georginio Rutter to cling onto, a final bastion of hope that we might escape the window with a ‘10’ that unlocked defences in a way no other player in the league could. And then he went to Brighton:

“I think we had a really good chance of keeping him, but it was always going to be in the balance because the exit clause was so high and to lose him was disappointing. It was disappointing for him, and he was desperate to go and committed to go.”

Rutter saw an opportunity in Brighton and could have been forgiven for asking exactly where this Leeds team is going. A footballer’s career is short, but it can be lucrative. How can we honestly expect him to be ‘loyal’ to Leeds? When you look at football clubs like a workplace, it’s really just a company he joined eighteen months ago, a stepping stone onto bigger things. Again, it’s a stark reminder of our place in the food chain:

“One of the things which has been a theme across the summer is getting to players who really wanted to play for Leeds United. That’s really hard because it surprised me how much players want to play in the Premier League versus the Championship.”

That tends to happen when you’re shopping for players like Emi Buendia and Gus Hamer:

“Buendia was on our list, and very clearly [the feedback] from Aston Villa [weas that he] wasn’t going to be released, and the player didn’t want to come back down. He felt he’d served his time at Championship level.”

And Hamer? Why did we supposedly bid £13m for him then not bother to follow up?

“We all assumed that there was no chance that Sheffield United would sell their star player to a promotion rival based on the price and the size of what promotion is worth. If they send them to Leeds United and we go up by one point, they’ve cost themselves over £100m in TV revenue.”

Okay, so why bother going for him? Kinnear felt the offer they’d made was fair and cited a tip-off from an agent for prompting them to make a bid. It’s pretty clear that £13m wouldn’t have done it, but maybe a second bid would have forced Sheffield United’s hand. Perhaps Leeds are so used to selling players at the first bid because they’re legally obliged to, they just expected to hear a “yes” at £13m. So, what’s the solution?

“We’ve seen Willy Gnonto can play more centrally. I think Largie Ramazani can play more centrally, and Manor Solomon.”

What about our American Boy, Brenden Aaronson?

“We built the scouting team up so they’re watching hours and hours of video footage to try and find the right players, and they talked a lot about it, they just couldn’t find a player that was going to be significantly better than Brenden Aaronson.”

Fair. I think they might have had the ‘US no.10s’ filter ticked on Wyscout though.

“I think if we’d have signed Brenden Aaronson this summer, even at half the price we actually signed him for in the Premier League, everybody would think that was a very credible replacement at number 10 at Championship level.”

Except you signed him at full price in the Premier League, where he wasn’t good enough. I’m willing and able to give Aaronson a chance to build on his decent start to the season, but come on, Angus.
Kinnear is still bullish about Leeds’ chances this year, citing confidence in the squad they’ve built:

“We certainly think that the squad is strong enough for promotion. I think we have, if you look at the value of the squad, I think it’s probably one of the highest valued squads in the history of the championship. It’s probably the first or second highest wage bill in the Championship.”

Avoiding the shortcomings of last season will be key to any successful promotion bid this year:

“We were definitely over dependent on two or three key players. The recruitment strategy across the summer has been to strengthen in some of those areas.”

Selling the key players off isn’t the usual strategy, but the Hull game showed glimpses of what they are trying to achieve this time. Less individualism, more input from the rest of the attacking group.

It is difficult to shop for Premier League-ready talent who are willing to play in the Championship. That’s probably one of the key takeaways from Kinnear’s interview:

“Every single player that we’re talking to is hoping to get a move into the Premier League or one of the top four leagues across Europe. The reality that Leeds United find themselves in and all Championship clubs is the Championship is the second choice.”

That much is clear, and Kinnear named both Jack Clarke and Jonathan Rowe as players who chose a top league over the English second tier:

“If we want to have Premier League players play for Leeds United, you need to be in the Premier League. It’s as simple as that.”

Sounds like a plan. Let’s do that. ⬢