“We have been screwed up.” Whether you approve of Andrea Radrizzani’s Twitter methods or not, Leeds United’s owner neatly summed up the rollercoaster of emotions during deadline day at Elland Road.
It began with Victor Orta in Eindhoven, hopeful of landing a talented attacker he has tracked for years, and ended with the club’s top brass gathered in Elland Road’s offices trying to push through an 18-year-old Italy international’s signature. Leeds fans woke up with hope, but suffered blow after blow until some salvation as Friday arrived.
The upshot of deadline day is the Whites have traded a 24-year-old winger with 86 Premier League appearances to his name, for an 18-year-old striker with three years of Swiss top-flight experience and four Italy caps. Gnonto’s potential, on paper, looks immense, but as Jesse Marsch himself admitted last month, he is not yet ready to impact Premier League games.
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In the end, after weeks of weighing it up, the appetite for a striker proved too much for Leeds to go hungry on deadline day. Andrea Radrizzani had talked about the €40m set aside for Charles De Ketelaere, before Angus Kinnear and Marsch would talk about the need for the right profile of striker.
Most recently, Marsch queried how much surplus cash there was available at all for any kind of move, before Kinnear would talk up the club’s existing forwards and opposition to adding “warm bodies” for the sake of it. Then Rodrigo dislocated his shoulder.
It became absolutely clear Leeds needed to act before 11pm on Thursday. Patrick Bamford was not trusted to come on in the 32nd minute on Tuesday night and his road back to full sharpness will not be short.
All of Marsch’s comments about rehabilitation have stressed the importance of avoiding new injuries during recovery. Niggles are to be expected, but they must be listened to, respected and nursed, as they were in Southampton with Bamford’s groin.
If rushing back Bamford was not a preferred option, then the burden suddenly falls on Joe Gelhardt’s shoulders, but that too looked a high-risk option for a club looking to ease its way away from last year’s troubles. Bamford will get sharper and Rodrigo will heal, but the Whites needed a striker and they could see it on Tuesday night.
Gnonto is much more of a striker than Daniel James and in that regard, it’s easy to see why the squad was restructured in that way yesterday, but can the Italian be counted on to shoulder the frontline burden? He is a project which may pay off big time in the long term, but he seems unlikely to make the immediate impact Leeds evidently wanted in their other targets.
The day began with Cody Gakpo and Orta in the same city, but the director of football would fly home alone. The 23-year-old is a forward Orta has admired for many years and was mentioned in dispatches throughout the summer.
Gakpo’s name rose to prominence in the Leeds rumour mill just as the De Ketelaere pursuit was coming to the boil. It had always been seen as a one-or-the-other situation and the Belgian was the priority.
The PSV Eindhoven man was on Orta’s shortlist in January too, but once the De Ketelaere run went nowhere, the club went into that reflective state. United were taking stock and while they were, others were circling.
Manchester United, with the finances to blow Leeds out of the water, were keen on Gakpo, while PSV still had a sniff of Champions League football too, which gave the Dutchman another reason to stay and his club the financial income to stave off major sales. The tables turned dramatically this week, right when Leeds wanted them too.
Erik ten Hag’s outfit moved for Ajax’s Antony, thus ending any Gakpo interest, while PSV were knocked out of the Champions League by Rangers, thus removing their financial safety net. Gakpo was in play and Leeds felt they had the deal in place.
Southampton would push aggressively for Gakpo, but when Orta flew out to the Netherlands on Wednesday, it was with the transfer to Leeds virtually in place. Then FC Volendam happened.
Gakpo was scoring a hat-trick in a 7-1 win at Philips Stadion while the director of football was weighing up the final details of the transfer. When full-time came, the landscape was shifting beneath his feet.
PSV’s board were coming under increasing pressure from their fans and head coach, Ruud van Nistelrooy, to retain their prized talent. They bowed to that pressure and simply changed their minds. No deal.
The chase for a striker began in the spring. As Eddie Nketiah was tackling the ball into Illan Meslier’s net on May 8, United’s top brass felt they were watching their next centre forward, with a deal to be done.
His form for Arsenal made it impossible for the Gunners to hold back on the lucrative contract he felt he deserved to stay. De Ketelaere’s widely-reported saga would come next and then Gakpo would be succeeded by yet more drama.
Bamba Dieng, little known in West Yorkshire, would become the hot topic of September 1. Orta and Leeds moved quickly after Gakpo and news began to filter out about interest in the Senegalese before 11.30am.
The move was alive enough for Marsch to cut off questions about it in his 1.30pm press conference, while Radrizzani was welcoming Dieng to Leeds on Twitter before 2pm. As the pre-Brentford briefing fizzled out, there was confidence the move was happening.
A flight was being prepared for Dieng to conclude his switch and all the while, James was quietly going about his business with Fulham. That loan move would end up on ice for several hours before an eventual announcement some 45 minutes after the deadline.
It was stuck on the back burner because of the chaos Dieng was causing. The 22-year-old’s head was turned virtually on the stairs up to the aeroplane he was about to take to West Yorkshire.
Nice had swooped, reportedly with more money for the player and Marseille, and Leeds were left assessing their options with less than six hours of the window to go. Gnonto, another mentioned throughout the summer as a target, is where the road would eventually lead.
On balance, it’s been a hugely encouraging window for Leeds. Brenden Aaronson, Marc Roca, Tyler Adams and Luis Sinisterra have already impressed for the first team, while Darko Gyabi and Sonny Perkins are earning rave reviews with the under-21s.
That business, again to the club’s credit, was done months in advance of yesterday’s deadline, which is probably why they have settled so quickly. However, the immense vacuum of time which followed Sinisterra’s signature has only turned the volume up on demands for a left-back and a striker.
Beyond one blunt press conference in Australia, Marsch and Leeds have never really got going on the left-back debate. That’s long looked like a slot they are convinced by with what’s already in the building.
The striker vacancy has been a lightning rod for arguments and analysis through the summer, fuelled by on-the-record comments coming out of the club and, in short, Bamford’s fitness issues. An 18-year-old coming in from the Swiss top flight does not feel like that ready-made starter this squad seems like it needs when injuries hit.
There will be no pressure on a teenager like Gnonto to deliver quickly, but hope, with that time and space, he does develop into a fearsome asset. The questions will continue about why someone more senior was not signed and, for that matter, long before the lottery of a deadline day.
Whether you have agreed with the reasons or not, the club’s top brass and Marsch have said enough on the record about why the striker situation has gone the way it has. Then on deadline day itself, Marsch reiterated how some players only become available at the last.
Asked if he was frustrated it went down to the wire, Marsch said: “That's almost always the case. Things pop up in the 11th hour that weren't there a month, two months ago. Let's see.”
Gakpo is an ideal example of those dominoes falling late in the window. Time will tell if the dominoes did eventually fall in the right way for Leeds.
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