Georginio Rutter and the peak of the Brighton model
Things may not actually be that bad. But they're bad enough to have me thinking about Peter Ridsdale, Professor McKenzie, Ken Bates and the parallels. So that is bad enough.
Wolves, Leicester, Brighton: once upon a time, when Andrea Radrizzani was running the place, Leeds United had more models than Kraftwerk. And then this week we had the inevitable punchline, and the indignity of losing our best player to one of those models, or rather, the advanced and improved 2024 version that Leeds could not have imagined was possible back when Radrizzani was trying to copy it.
There's something to cling to, I suppose, in how Leeds have finally got to the point of having some players that Brighton & Hove Albion might actually want. Well done, Victor Orta, we got there in the end. The only hitch is that we had to pay £25m plus add-ons for Georginio Rutter in the first place: it's not the buy-low sell-high technique's finest hour, but we'll just have to take it.
We've no choice, really, but taking it, and that's release clauses for you, or as Daniel Farke calls them, 'sins of the past'. The recent past, in Rutter's case, and given that current majority owners 49ers Enterprises were on board and fully involved in contracting Rutter to Leeds United in January 2023, it's so recent that it can't be meaningfully distinguished from the present. In the same way the release clause in Archie Gray's contract - given to him in January this year, after signing his first pro deal in March 2023 - was not some ancient ghost in the corridors at Elland Road. Get Michael Skubala back to unmask whoever was writing these contracts for Leeds United and, like every episode of Scooby Doo, it won't end with much of a revelation. They might have got away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling rich clubs.
Some of the Peacocks' current predicament does have longer roots, though, and in some ways the sales of Rutter and Crysencio Summerville are still Victor Orta's to own, not as specific actions, but more as examples of hubris still stalking the corridors of Leeds. Perhaps it was Radrizzani, at the top, setting the tone. Orta had confidence in his own abilities, but who was selling who to whom, here, when Radrizzani was planning to outsmart Brighton's bespoke, sophisticated and proven database with, well, Victor Orta and that was it?
To be fair to Orta, that he could spot a player is supported by the current valuations of Summerville, Pascal Struijk, Illan Meslier and Wilf Gnonto; I'll chuck in goalkeeper Elia Caprile, now with Napoli, while I'm feeling kind. But after being fair to Orta, we need to take him, Radrizzani and Angus Kinnear and rattle them all together, asking, did you really think you could roll this on indefinitely, Brighton-style, relying on one maniac in an anorak without Brighton-style resources to keep uncovering uncut gems? The man who brought us Crysencio Summerville also thought he could build a team for European qualification around Rasmus Kristensen and Marc Roca. How confident could you be, long term, that this would become a model to rival Brighton or Brentford?