Shedding last season’s top-flight demise finally began at Leeds United last night. Robin Koch is the first of those players with a significant hand in May’s relegation to jump ship before it lands in the Championship.
Koch, in fact, played more minutes than anyone else for Leeds last season in a defence which conceded more goals than any other team. As a 26-year-old with designs on caps for a World Cup-winning national team and one year left on his contract, Koch was always on the list of likely departures this summer.
If you believe the speculation he was in high demand too. Koch’s representatives were not shy in putting his name about to drum up interest in his services. Ultimately, it’s the Bundesliga seventh’s best team, Eintracht Frankfurt, a Europa Conference League play-off round and a new home within 70 miles of his birthplace that awaits Koch.
Leeds were just as open to Koch leaving as he was. There was not a huge amount of resistance to seeing another club pick up 100 per cent of his sizeable salary, as well as a loan fee, two months before the end of the transfer window.
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A loan allows a small window of opportunity for Koch to return in some way to Elland Road. If, for example, the Whites look set for promotion towards the end of next season and Koch is turning heads in Germany, a new contract could be offered, but it seems distinctly unlikely.
This, to all intents and purposes, is the end of Koch in West Yorkshire. The centre-back arrived in the summer after promotion from the Championship as someone Victor Orta had tracked for a long time.
The German took Ben White’s number-five shirt and was billed as the ball-playing defender to fill that considerable void. At no point did Koch hit White’s levels, but there were signs of a promising partnership with Liam Cooper until injury hit in the first half of 2020/21.
Fitness continued to be a problem through his second season and it was not until the most recent campaign we saw Koch’s most consistent minutes. Sadly, he was one of many who failed to make it work across a 38-game campaign.
Koch’s departure is expected to be swiftly followed by another right-footed centre-back’s. Diego Llorente should be a Roma loanee before the end of the week, if not by the time Leeds head to Oslo.
It’s quickly left the squad with Charlie Cresswell as the most senior, natural, right-sided centre-back. Luke Ayling and Rasmus Kristensen can do a job there, but it underlines why Nick Hammond called Liverpool about Nat Phillips’s availability.
Wiping Koch’s wages from the books releases that much more flexibility in the club’s budget for acquisitions, which are expected to emerge in the near future, now Daniel Farke is in the building.
