With Kalvin Phillips having left for Manchester City for £45m and Raphinha seemingly also on his way out of Elland Road, Leeds need to reconsider their transfer policy.
That’s the verdict of former Liverpool and Nottingham Forest star turned Mirror Sport columnist Stan Collymore, who reckons they should be targeting a different kind of player to those they have gone for in recent seasons.
Collymore said: “Raphinha is off, Kalvin Phillips has already gone, so the question is: ‘What next for Leeds United?’ They have Jesse Marsch and they stayed up, they have gone through all the Ted Lasso jokes, so it’s a clean slate and where do they go from here?
"Do they want to be an experimental young side whose players are picked off by bigger clubs? Or do they want to be a side who isn’t flirting with relegation from the Premier League again this year and for several years to come? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive fan of players with a younger profile, of 23 or 24, getting a good go at clubs. But if they want to become that side which doesn’t get itself into tight spots, which is what their fans will no doubt hope they do want, then they need to be picking off two or three experienced loan signings this summer. They need to populate the squad with players who are 29, 30, 31 or maybe even older.
“And while I’m not saying one of them has to be Fabian Delph, they definitely need a player or two of that ilk. I mean, would it not have been beyond Leeds to say to James Milner, ‘Okay, before you sign your contract at Liverpool, we know it’s a great club, but would you come back to where it started for you and we will automatically put you on the coaching staff with the Under-18s or 23s? You’re not going to play every game but you will be able to help some of the youngsters’.
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“There are plenty of rookies at Leeds who’d benefit from that. And it’s about having two or three dependable names to complement the younger lads in the squad so that when the going gets tough they have players who’ll say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this’. Leeds haven’t done that so far in the Premier League, while Aston Villa, who went up at the same time, have done.
“They’ve signed Philippe Coutinho, Emi Martinez, they’ve tried Ross Barkley on loan… Barkley did all right without it quite working out, but at least they tried. And if Leeds are going to consolidate and stay up, and then be in the mix, they have to balance the squad out with serious Premier League experience like those three have, and there will be plenty of that about.
"It’s a case of needing to do their homework so they don’t give £70,000 a week to someone who is injury prone and will just be a drain on resources. And while I’d have liked to have seen them be a bit more savvy when the transfer window opened and, while time is passing by, it’s still not too late to get a couple of signings sorted.”
