The Summer 2024 Transfer Thread - Closed

Not coming back

Harrison is not a TOP, TOP winger....albeit decent.

His workrate is unbelievable and he defends really well....he could definitely be turned into a very decent LB!

We could get Firpo wages off the books as he's not good enough for the Prem anyway and I'd replace him with Harrison!

Harrison's best position would be as a wing back but we know Farke won't change formation....

Farke's missus will probably be piissed off with him as he'll refuse any other sexual positions and just stick with the same old missionary formation....

Mrs Farke is probably very happy if he keeps going for 70 mins without a change though?

I don’t think any of them will go. We don’t need to sell and I doubt we will be offered silly money for any of our players. We have one of the tightest defences in the championship, there’s only two clubs who have conceded less goals than us. Selling our keeper would also be too disruptive. Wrong time of the year to bring in someone new.

The only player I see us signing is a number 10. We might offload Gelhardt as he allegedly wants to go, and some of the u21s out on loan. As Farke said, be a quiet transfer window.

Meslier to be replaced by a bench warmer at Liverpool is the bet

Looks like spurs bound but my spurs mates say not on the spurs radar

The Left Back situation can wait until the summer, there's no urgency to find replacement at present. The January window will all be about a number 10, and whether it's McAtee or Carvalho etc, don't see it being Buendia though, he's a £30m player.

I'd consider playing Gray as the Number 10, but I'm not a big fan of taking ex players back on loan to help their development at their new club. There's more forward looking options out there #JamesMcAtee

God no - another winger is the last thing we need. 😮

Mouseman is right in his assessment of what we need.

I don't hate Aaronson, he's a hard worker and a decent footballer in many positions, but alas he's not the main man at 10.

We're more balanced now than last season because across defence and midfield - even out wide - we're as good if not better. The failure to convert domination into wins isn't about the lack of a 9 - we have them - it's about the lack of a 10 that stays forward and unlocks defences with class.

Sunderland and Sheff Utd sit above us - who is at 10 for them? There's what we need.

The mood music around Solomon isn't great, he may or may not be with us beyond Christmas. But that's not why I'm mooting Kent, he's a multi faceted player who often played Number 10 at Rangers, and even if he doesn't, I have little doubt that Gnonto can also cover in that position, freeing up space on the wing.

I think Solomon is still not right after a long injury - he may need a bit of patience, but he doesn't seem to be getting it from a large portion of the fanbase. I hope he shows more after the international break because he has all the talent.

I think Kent would be like Gnonto or Aaronson - a winger/attacker who could do the job OK, but not be the main man. I watched Hamer making the difference again today for Blunts and I think we have to get out there and find that 10 - not convert another winger. Kent's a good player, but he's more of the same for us I think.

I can imagine us signing him, and having another "attack by committee" situation in the second half of the season.

In the mean time we have the best GD in the division because overall we're balanced this season, it's not all doom and gloom, it's just that we've been so overwhelmingly dominant we should be top by now and some are grumpy about it - the BBC comments section yesterday was an eye opener!!

I guess he's only an insurance policy. I don't see him playing unless three of the other midfielders are unavailable. At least he can play in a couple of positions and unlike other free transfers, wasn't asking for a premiership salary,

In general, the squad looks very healthy. We have six of the eleven highest valued players in the championship according to FootballTransferMarket.com - Meslier, Gnonto, Ampadu, Struijk, James and Piroe. And eight of the highest valued 25 with Aaronson and Solomon included.

After 11 games in, full marks to our recruitment team, and to Farko for persusading Aaronson to reintegrate - he's been absolutley top notch in recent matches. Its tricky picking a top three performers for the season so far, but I'd say Gnonto, Aaronson and Firpo wouldn't be far off the mark.

Excellent summary. I’d agree with all of that. We’ve plugged a lot of the gaps from last season and there’s more variety in the midfield than we had. If only be looking to add a good number 10 and then we will be well positioned to try and win this league. We’ve still got Crew and Harry Gray on the books and both will progress to first team players at some point in next12-18 months. Farkes done really well to knit this unit together.

Please no, he’s as old as the hills. He makes Joe Biden look young. We’re far better seeing what Charlie Crew can do in the meantime whilst waiting for Wober to get fit in six weeks time which is the earliest it would take unfit old man Kouyate to get up to scratch, then bring Gyabi back at Christmas from his excellent spell at Plymouth. Farke has as good as said he hates signing players in October. Let it be so.

Agreed, think he's well past his best and it would hold back Crew.

But do hope we're looking to sign some quality players in January.

I’d rather see us back in for Hamer or a number ten in January instead of flapping about adding a quick fix like Kouyate that no one else wanted to sign.

My take on Bogle is that I hope he gets better as his touch is extremely heavy at moment causing him to have go backwards as by the time he gets it under control the other are up on him.

I'm beginning to wonder if Blunts have had our pants down with Bogle, nothing seen so far that gives me any level of confidence!.

Hard to say at this stage, players need time to bed in, and for the coaches to get the best out of them. He didn’t look good today but he’s over 170 games behind him and 4 England u20 caps. Some players take longer to come good and some never do. I always give newbies the benefit of the doubt for at least their first dozen or so games.

To be fair, I think it was an excellent and very thought provoking interview - it was more about bigging up Aaronson than Buendia - he doesn't even admit to putting a bid in for Buendia. Here's what he actually did say:

“A really strong replacement at the right side of centre-half, strong replacement at right-back. We accept we've lost a lot of potential in Archie [Gray], but, for this coming season, Jayden [Bogle] should be able to perform at or above Archie’s level quite comfortably.

“Two good solutions, creative solutions, at wing with one an emerging player with Largie [Ramazani] and one in Manor [Solomon], who's really proven at a Champions League level and has the ability to really dominate this league. And the one missing piece of the jigsaw, which Daniel was very fair to identify, was, ideally, to give the window an A+ grade, we'd have secured a number 10.

“Those number 10s are, as Daniel did point out in his interview, really hard to find. If you look at great number 10s in the Championship across the last few seasons, you've probably got Emi Buendia at Norwich [City] and Pablo Hernandez, but there's not many others. It's a very hard position to recruit.

“It's a very hard position where you get goals and assists and a physical presence and the players we looked at weren't available to us, or we didn't think were at the standard. My interpretation of Daniel’s statement, from a club perspective, is, as a club, we couldn't identify an attainable number 10 who was going to make us stronger than we are now.

“We have some very talented creative players. Willy can play at number 10 and I know Brenden is struggling from a fan perspective because of his decision to go on loan, but if we signed Brenden Aaronson this summer, even at half the price we actually signed him for in the Premier League, everybody would think that was a very, very credible replacement at number 10 at Championship level.”

On the subject of Buendia, Kinnear said the Argentine, a former colleague of Farke’s at Carrow Road, was someone the club enquired about this summer. While he was unavailable in the clearest terms possible from Villa Park, Gustavo Hamer was a player Leeds did bid for.

Kinnear said there had been some noises from South Yorkshire to suggest the playmaker may be available, but a bid was swiftly turned down by the Blades.

“I can talk specifically about two examples, two players we thought would fit the bill, would be significantly better than who we have currently, bear in mind we're looking at replacing a £40m player (Georginio Rutter), which is obviously going to be challenging at Championship level,” said Kinnear. “Buendia was on our list and, very clearly from Aston Villa, wasn't going to be released and the player didn't want to come back down to Championship level.

“He felt he served his time at Championship level and then Gustavo Hamer, who we've had an interest in before he went to Sheffield United, was another player who we felt would have significantly improved the team. Now, the way that transfer worked is we all assumed there was no chance Sheffield United would sell their star player to a promotion rival, based on the prize and the size of of what promotion’s worth.

“So if they sell to Leeds United and we go up by one point and they don't, they've cost themselves over £100m in TV revenue. However, we were given some light, and this is where the market works, through agents, through contacts, they might be open to an offer.

“Sheffield United are a difficult club to deal with at the moment because they're in an ownership transition. So there's no friendly face you can ring up and try and get a sense of whether the player’s for sale or not.

“So the only way to provoke the conversation was to make an offer and we made an offer, which we think was at a fair level and they came back very clearly and said he was not for sale in this window to anybody, and he certainly wouldn't be on sale to Leeds United and there was no price that could pull him away.

“Once you get that kind of feedback, and you believe in that kind of feedback, then you have to move on. Very simply, Gustavo Hamer wasn't available for Leeds United in this window.”

Like Buendia and Hamer, Kinnear also mentioned Manchester City’s James McAtee and Liverpool’s Fabio Carvalho as names they had in mind for filling the Rutter void. However, for different reasons, they too could not be acquired.

This left Elland Road’s recruitment team back at the drawing board and, Kinnear revealed, unable to find any available targets who were significantly better than Aaronson in that role behind a striker.

“Brendan's attitude since he came back is first class, he's really hard working, he's really earnest, he's desperate to make it work, he's desperate to win the fans back over,” said Kinnear. “We had lots of conversations with the recruitment team, where we would analyse a player.

“There are hundreds of players, so the process is really, really robust. There is data on hundreds and hundreds of players, in every position. We've built a full scouting team since Victor [Orta]'s departure, rebuilt the scouting team up, so they're watching hours and hours of video footage to try and find the right players.

“They just couldn't find a player that was going to be significantly better than Brenden Aaronson. Brenden Aaronson is a United States international, he's a player we bought for over £20m, he's a player that could probably play in any of the top five leagues across Europe.

“We also watched him in pre-season and Daniel and the scouting staff and the coaching staff are excited about what he might deliver. If you look at his first three games, as he's working his way back into the team, he should have scored three goals and he scored two.

Agree with you Smurf - I like the interview and good to hear from him like this in detail.

There is lots going on with Elland Road too - more to come I'm sure, but I understand the hierarchy are now openly banding around a new capacity of 53,000 when all the work is done. It's West and North stand work.

Not saying the interview with the Square Ball was full of BS, it certainly contains some good stuff. But In general, I'm leaning more towards TC's point of view.

Likewise, I feel we left it very late with some of our transfers.

Saying that Bogle will prove to be as good or even better than Gray, even at RB is, to say the least, stretching it a bit.

And Rodon (happy we got him permanently) was already here, so he's not a replacement.

Felt like quite a lot of spin or excuses to justify/explain some of the signings and more importantly those that didn't materialize.

Of course some players are gonna be out of our reach for whatever reasons (a club should know what the chances are), but needing to go back to the drawing board rather points to not being prepared enough.

Hundreds and hundreds of players watched and not one available to improve on a nr. 10 position which we in truth have not had since Pablo.

And now, all of a sudden Aaronson is our nr. 10?

Ah well, all water under the bridge. Look forward to hear more about the timeline on improving and expanding ER. Would love 53.000 or more.