We’ve been linked with Norwich City striker Kyle Lafferty for a couple of months now, but Steve Evans isn’t saying whether or not we’ll try to get him on an emergency loan.
It is believed that Lafferty was one of the 2 players we almost signed on Monday, only to narrowly fail to ‘get the deal over the line’ before the deadline expired, and we have since learned that a relapse of Chris Wood’s injury will keep the big man out for at least another two weeks. So LUTV asked Steve Evans whether Wood’s injury would force the club to sign a replacement when the loan window opens next week.
"It doesn’t mean we’ll definitely make a move. We’ve always said we’d like to strengthen that area, and we said that in the build up to deadline day. But I think it’s a bit of a soap opera now, deadline day, and desperate clubs take desperate measures. We’re not a desperate club. I’ve made it clear that we’re not going to bring in players that aren’t going to add to what we’ve got. We wanted more quality, and we couldn’t get one or two over the line.”
And speaking to the Yorkshire Evening Post about Lafferty in particular, the head coach said "I can’t really rule it in because I don’t know what Alex Neil’s thoughts would be and we will have to revisit whether it would be right for us to do it on a short term as opposed to the end of the season that we wanted to do. We can keep our focus and concentration on Nottingham Forest and then we can perhaps see afterwards what goes beyond on Monday.”
Lafferty is out of favour at Carrow Road, but is keen to get some first team football somewhere, otherwise he might miss out on the chance to represent Northern Ireland at Euro 2016. It looks like we could do with him as cover for the time being, but if he can’t get into a Norwich side that is struggling in the Premiership, I’m not convinced he is the type of quality player we need to take us forward.
And as we seem to be running out of strikers, it’s a good job that we managed to hang on to Mirco Antenucci this week, even though Ascoli were keen to take him back to Italy. His agent insisted today that the 31 year-old is happy to remain at Leeds till the end of the season, but as his contract is up in June he might well be leaving us then, especially as Ascoli are still interested in the striker.
I’d be sorry to see the back of him, as he’s looked quite decent in patches, but he hasn’t had too many starts this season after both head coaches have mostly played with a lone striker. Given his age we might be better off looking for a younger replacement in the summer.