Tom Lees has completed his transfer to Sheffield Wednesday and we seemed to have been rebuffed in our attempt to replace him with Chesterfield’s Liam Cooper.
Lees signed a three-year deal at Hillsborough this morning and joined the Wendies for an undisclosed fee. But that isn’t likely to be very much, as their manager Stuart Gray initially claimed they’d got him for nothing, before Wednesday’s official website backtracked and admitted that they had actually paid us a fee.
Lees was signed by United as an eight year old and progressed through their youth-team system before turning professional in 2009. After a loan spell at Bury he made the breakthrough into the first team and went on to make 135 appearances, and there has been such a turnover of players in the last few years that at 23 he was the longest-serving player in the current squad.
But he never quite lived up to his early potential, as he tended to look a bit lightweight and occasionally slow to pick up his man, though it didn’t help that he was playing in a defence that looked dysfunctional for much of the time, with constant changes of formation under McDermott in particular.
In fact it’s a surprise that Wednesday want to sign a Leeds defender at all after the 6-0 thrashing they handed out the last time we met, though Lees was fortunate to play only half that game before being replaced by Matt Smith. We wish Lees well for the future, but in hindsight it’s a shame we didn’t accept the million pound offer we got when he first broke through, from then-Premiership Bolton.
Lees’ departure leaves us short of central defenders, with Zailiukas already gone and the deal for Rossini falling through, and we now seen unlikely to sign Liam Cooper, with the two clubs some way apart in their valuations of the player. Chesterfield are hoping for a fee of £1m, and Leeds’ second offer was just less than half that amount
Leeds made enquiries after Cooper impressed in last week’s friendly between the clubs, but after our second offer was rebuffed the club has issued a statement to say we will now be looking elsewhere for a new defender. "The club will not be progressing this matter further and any interest in the player has now ended.”
So we won’t be signing Cooper unless the in 22-year-old is keen to move to a higher division and submits a transfer request , and even that could alert a few other clubs in the Championship who might be prepared to out-bid the fee we’ve offered so far. But with time running out before the start of the season we’ll have to bring in some defensive cover pretty soon.