Permanent Leeds United exit for ‘high likelihood’ after £6m-a-year reveal – Phil Hay

Before they got him off the wage bill on loan in the Italian capital, they apparently paid him “£6 million a year,” which equates to about £115,000 per week, according to CEO Angus Kinnear in an interview with The Square Ball on September 7. That deal appears to have made him one of the highest-paid players in the team.

Dab Moylan said of Kinnear’s reveal (46m 50s): “When it came up and he said £6m a year I went, ‘ok fine yeah footballers earn millions of pounds a year’ in my head and then thought of the next thing and moved on.

“Then when I was editing it I went, ‘I wonder how much that is a week… Oh! That’s a lot of money a week’.”

After he then suggested it may not have been an exact figure given Kinnear’s unwillingness to discuss specific contract terms elsewhere, Hay responded: “The line we were given when he signed his new contract was that centre-backs are getting increasingly expensive, which is true.

The catch to that is that good center-backs are becoming very costly, and I don’t believe much of what we’ve seen of Llorente has persuaded us at all that he’s what you need in leagues like the Premier League.

He may have moved to Roma and taken out a few loans, but Roma specifically chose not to exercise the option they held over him, which, based on my understanding, should have been the price Leeds paid for him.

returning the loan to him There’s a good chance, in my opinion, that he’ll go there permanently at some point.

“But you’ve already seen with Rasmus Kristensen that it doesn’t seem to be going very well for him at Roma, which I don’t think has come as a huge surprise.”

ASAP

The perplexing choices Leeds United has made in just the last year alone might fill an entire book, and no doubt some will.

But rewarding Llorente with an extension to that doesn’t expire until 2026 just before Christmas is one of the strangest decisions, given that he had looked well below par as a regular in the back line that saw Marcelo Bielsa fired and relegation only avoided at the last minute the season before, and then had lost his place in what turned out to be the worst defense in the Premier League the previous season.

It appeared to have somehow paid off when Roma agreed to take him on loan in January with a permanent option that would have made the club back their £18m.

But Jose Mourinho’s side apparently came to their senses in the summer and decided they weren’t going to pay that, so he is back there on loan again now.

And while it is undoubtedly advantageous to have high salaries off the books, if they really are that high, the issue was all the club’s fault.

It’s made worse by the fact that Robin Koch, who was also primarily accountable for the terrible goals conceded record last season but had a larger market to sell to, is expected to leave Eintracht Frankfurt for nothing at the end of his loan this year.

Both players are truly good, but they frequently gave the impression to be bad at Elland Road. The club must thus hope that Roma really wants to take Llorente, 30, off their hands permanently in order to avoid having to negotiate a release from that deal again the following summer.