According to CEO Angus Kinnear, Leeds United were “naive” and “underestimated the strength” of some players’ desire to leave the club during the summer transfer window.
Elland Road experienced a high level of turnover this summer, with 18 players leaving the club following their relegation from the Premier League to the Championship.
Kinnear was astonished by how desperate some players were to go throughout the summer, despite his understanding of the gravity of the situation.
“I have to say, I kind of feel like I’ve been maybe naive about it, but it’s been just brutally disappointing at how we’ve seen players want to crawl over broken glass to leave our club,” the Leeds CEO remarked on The Athletic’s Square Ball Podcast (7 September).
“You guys know, I love the club and I know we’ve had a bad year, but I thought there’d be a bigger emotional bond and a desire to sort of make up for bad seasons they had last year for a number of these players.”
“I think it’s more of a lack of desire to play in the Championship, and I have to admit, we definitely underestimated the strength of that feeling.”
Difficult
Relegation is never a pleasant experience for anyone associated with a football team, whether they are fans, staff, players, or those higher up in the boardroom. When a club fails, many jobs are jeopardised, including that of the players on the pitch, albeit in this case, it is often the staff who make the demands.
Some stars will want to transfer and play at a better level right away, rather than stay and fight with the club, and Kinnear should have expected a busy summer in terms of outgoings, which is exactly what he got. Throughout the summer, Elland Road was a revolving door for players coming in and out of the club.
Some of them were so desperate to leave that they used tactics that would have made them unpopular in the Elland Road bleachers, and if Kinnear has learned anything, it is that he will not want to stay in the Championship for much longer.
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