An extension of Diego Llorente
If a player extends his contract but doesn’t do a video, does he get a pay rise? If a club renegotiates a contract but doesn’t tweet a photo, is it legally binding? If Diego Llorente falls over in the woods and nobody is there to call him an idiot, do Leeds concede a goal?
Maybe Leeds United just got giddy from the widespread arrring and y’arrrring when they announced Big Sexy Pirate Pascal Struijk’s new contract, and thought heck, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, why not a new contract for his First Mate Diego Llorente, too? That put the crocodile on the poop deck alright, one sword too many in the Pop Up Pirate’s barrel. Llorente? New contract? Why?
It’s a fair question. Footballers are usually given new contracts for one or more of a few well-defined reasons. The most popular are a younger player’s performances earning a high wage and a longer term, which can also be viewed from the perspective of a club gripped with fear that its new star will be poached by some behemoth team; or a player without much time left on his deal arranging a longer stay.
Neither of those applied to Llorente. He’s 29, and his current contract wasn’t expiring until summer 2024. And his performances? It's hard to argue in his favour, but let’s at least try. In the first five Premier League games of this season Leeds conceded five, from an expected total of 6.4, Llorente forming a decent partnership, at last, with Robin Koch. In seven of the last eight — without Llorente starting — Leeds have given up fourteen, from an expected 10.6. The averages have gone from 1 goal conceded per game / 1.28 expected with Llorente, to 2 goals conceded per game / 1.51 expected without him. Which suggests we should get him back in the team straight away. What I’ve left out of all that, of course, is the game away to Brentford, when every soccer statistician quivered in fear while Llorente booted the ball, metaphorically, through their spreadsheets and into his own net. Five times. With gusto.
We got the roulette wheel Llorente again in last week’s friendly against Monaco, and his devotion to eccentricity is the undermining doom his reputation will never outgrow. Dispassionately, his presence at Leeds makes sense: an experienced Spanish international defender capable of sustaining good form and improving our goals against column, for which benefit we pay the price of his spells of delirium. He ought to be an asset to a club in the lower half of the Premier League, about as good as you’re gonna get round here. But this level of the Premier League is marked by thirst for renewal and improvement, making it hard to want to sign that player twice, or come up with a rationale now we have.