Howling in Eindhoven

The reporting by Rik Elfrink in the Eindhovens Dagblad newspaper is vivid. It features Leeds' director of football Victor Orta, flying in from Yorkshire to watch Cody Gakpo score a farewell hat-trick for PSV and gazump Southampton's deal with a bid for him from Leeds United. Personal terms had been discussed with the player, and he was happy with the offer. PSV's management, seeking a big sale this season to help them meet cost controls in the Eredivisie, were happy about Southampton's €40m bid being replaced by United's €43m. Now, sometime after midnight in the boardroom at the Philips Stadion, Orta was hearing bad news. Gakpo was changing his mind. He had decided more first team football and more hat-tricks for PSV were his best way of getting a place at the World Cup in November. He was staying in Eindhoven.

“This must have something to do with Louis van Gaal,” Orta shouted [van Gaal is the Netherlands' national team manager], according to those involved ... “This is not possible at all, I am completely flabbergasted.” The Spaniard was angry with everything and everyone and didn’t understand a thing. He tried to find Gakpo’s father as an ally, but he could do little about it. The PSV player himself was adamant, Cody Gakpo did not want a deal and did not have a good feeling about it. "I’ll be back in the winter," said Orta, who felt that he had been tricked.

For what it's worth, when Leeds United talk up their transfer strategy, I hear good things and see good actions. Five new first-team players were signed by the first week of July, two more Under-21 prospects added before the start of the season, even an experienced reserve goalkeeper turned up. Although many fans don't like a low net spend, it keeps a club stable, and avoids PSV's problems. It also leaves funds for tilting at windmills like Charles De Ketelaere, or even for snaring them on late deals, like when Raphinha suddenly became available in 2020, or Dan James went from playing against us to signing for us in 2021. There's a pattern of Leeds quickly acquiring targets, then going outside the budget later for players deemed too good, at the time, to miss, and it feels like a good two-tracked approach, securing the definites and pushing for the maybes.

The club's insistence on sticking to its principles over new signings has a lot of merit. Leeds say they only move with as much certainty as possible, using detailed long-term scouting, pre-transfer conversations and presentations, background checks to ensure the new player's character and personality will fit the squad ethos, the five core values Andrea Radrizzani says Leeds rely on to guide everything they do: "Ambition, pride, family, graft and innovation." They're aiming to buy low and ride their players' improvements until they sell high, following Leicester and Brighton. All this might not thrill anybody, and its application across the squad is suspect — no left-back this summer, no striker. But given every 'model' has its drawbacks, as a set of standards for Leeds to work to, I can't find many problems in what they say they're trying to do.

How, then, did this summer's transfer deadline day come down to Victor Orta screaming in an Eindhoven conference room? To one of the most expensive signings in the club's history, Dan James, chewing his nails after the deadline in Fulham, trying not to remember Orta's anguished yelling in 2019? To a private jet standing empty on the tarmac in France, as Bamba Dieng decided to move up the road from Marseille to Nice instead of joining Leeds, the air crew perhaps scrolling Twitter and finding Andrea Radrizzani talking about welcoming their absent cargo to Yorkshire? To two days of bids and enquiries reported for Hwang Hee-chan, Joel Piroe, Kelechi Iheanacho and Ben Brereton-Diaz? To eventually bringing forward an unready eighteen-year-old prospect, Willy Gnonto from FC Zurich, only confirming him after the deadline, one of four late deals in the Premier League — two involving Leeds?