Once again the final day of a transfer window has come and gone without Leeds making any further additions to the squad. Have the club done the right thing?
The main story late in the window was our offer to sign Jørgen Strand Larsen from Wolves, which to avoid breaching the PSR limits was on the basis of a loan for the rest of the current season, with an obligation to buy after June 30th, the final day of our current financial year. The total package was believed to amount to £40m.
Leeds weren’t prepared to go above that figure, so we allowed ourselves to be outbid by Crystal Palace. After negotiations with Wolves they got the price down to £43m plus a possible £5m in add-ons, which still outbid us and with the benefit of the funds being immediately available to the West Midlands club.
Personally I was always underwhelmed by the possibility of signing the Norwegian, and there are a few Leeds fans on social media who think we have ‘dodged a bullet’, by not signing a striker who has only one Premier League goal to his name. And who chalked up one more glaring miss in his final game for Wolves on Saturday.
Strand Larsen might be something of a panic buy for a Palace, who have been nosediving down the table in recent weeks, and who looked completely toothless against Forest on Sunday, even in the second half when the hosts were down to ten men. (A truly awful 45 minutes, which I forced myself to watch because it was relevant to our region of the league table).
Strand Larsen was doubtless signed to replace Jean-Philippe Mateta, who had made it clear that he wanted to leave Selhurst Park. Which was noted by more than a few Leeds fans who asked why we weren’t bidding for him instead, when he has 8 Premier League goals to his name to Strand Larsen’s one.
The answer is probably that AC Milan was always the Frenchman’s destination of choice, but in any case his medical in Italy revealed the extend of his current knee problem and caused that deal to collapse. So Palace will have both strikers on the books for the rest of the season, but that won’t cause them any PSR issues after the big fees they received for Eze and Guehi.
But if Leeds still had funds available after our efforts to sign Strand Larsen were rebuffed, could we have spent the money to sign another striker or to strengthen the squad elsewhere? According to Beren Cross in the Athletic, the club looked at every position other than Central Midfield, where we piled up more than enough options in the summer.
Goalkeepers and backup left sided defenders were looked at, but they didn’t identify any realistic options of the right quality whose current clubs would be willing to do a deal. And Daniel Farke is unwilling to run a bloated squad just for the sake of signing players. At the pre-Arsenal press conference he said "I would rather die the death of not having the group that is too big.”
He would rather run a smallish squad without too many players discontented that they aren’t getting enough games, and it also helps to meet those pesky PSR targets by keeping the wage bill down. But obviously at the risk of finding ourselves short if we get a run of injuries in the second half of the season.
A rumour is doing the rounds on several unofficial sites that Calvert-Lewin has picked up a thigh strain, but there is no confirmation of that from any official source. It that is true we will be down to Nmecha, who has his own history of injury problems, and Piroe, who has yet to prove himself up to Premier League standard. It hasn’t been announced whether Harry Gray has a recall clause in his loan deal to Rotherham.
So the loan signing of Buonanotte was our only incoming piece of business in this window, while those around us in the table all made more significant additions to their squad. We’ve been here before, as 12 months ago our promotion rivals strengthened while we didn’t, and that worked out OK. When we get to May, will we be regretting that we chose to do the same again?