It has been confirmed that Leeds have made a bid for Strand Larsen that hasn’t met Wolverhampton Wanderers’ valuation of the player, but it’s believed the two clubs aren’t far apart in the negotiations.

Speculation has been rife for a few days that Leeds have been interested in signing Strand Larsen, but here at Toellandback towers, we prefer to hold our fire until stories have been confirmed by reputable news outlets. But today The Athletic confirmed that Leeds have submitted a bid for the player.

Our offer is believed to be £30m ‘plus add ons’ (presumably additional payments in the future if and when certain milestones are reached). Wolves have rejected this offer, and are believed to value the Norwegian international at £40m. But even our initial offer would net the West Midlands club a profit, given that they signed him for £27m in the summer, when his move from Celta Vigo was made permanent after a season on loan.

Almost immediately Wolves turned down a bid of £55m from Newcastle before the summer transfer window closed, an offer they may now wish they had accepted. Instead they offered Strand Larsen a five-year contract, which will help to preserve his transfer value for a while yet.

Our relegation rivals Forest and West Ham were also believed to be interested in Strand Larsen when the current transfer window opened, but the Hammers have now signed strikers Taty Castellanos and Pablo Felipe. And Forest are now said to be looking at Mehdi Taremi of Olympiakos, which will be easier for them to negotiate when the Greek club are also owned by Evangelos Marinakis.

Leeds are believed to be close to the limits we can spend this in 2025/6 under the PSR regulations, but the impact will be lessened by the fact we are now halfway through the season. Say we manage to reach a deal for £36m (to make the maths easy) and he then signs a four and a half year deal, the amount attributed to the remaining six months of this season would only be on ninth of the transfer fee, or £4m.

And that is an amount we should be able to recoup before June 30th, the end of the current financial year, by selling a couple of players who are no longer part of our long term plans. As Piroe’s game time is already limited he might be less inclined to hang around if we bring in even more competition for the striking slots in the team, so might agree to a move to a leading Championship club.

The latest indications are that Wolves aren’t desperate to cash in on the player just yet, so it may well be that they don’t mind hanging onto the striker unless we can meet their full valuation. Which suggests that they haven’t yet given up hope of avoiding relegation after the recent improvement in their form under Rob Edwards, even though they are still 14 points behind 17th placed Forest.

So how excited should we be about this news? The reaction of most Leeds fans on social media has been decidedly lukewarm, for the obvious reason that Strand Larsen has only scored one goal this season in the Premier League! But that has been in a struggling side, who won’t have created many opportunities for him, and his form and confidence has dipped due to the general situation at the club.

In 2024/5 he contributed 14 goals, including three in consecutive games in April as Wolves surged to safety. That was when he had better creative players such as Cunha, Ait-Nouri and Semedo to provide some service, before all three were sold by Wolves in the summer, leading to their slump this time around.

My current feeling is that we already have enough in the striking department, with Calvert-Lewin and Nmecha in good form and showing their worth, so I’m not that bothered whether this transfer goes through or not. That said, both strikers have had their injury problems in the recent past, so we might need to add another striker to the squad just in case.

Reuters