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Andrea Radrizzani has helped alter the face of Leeds United, so much so that he almost changed the club’s crest last year.
After a vehement protest against the change the decision was reversed but on the pitch and indeed at board level he has significantly improved matters.
Leeds were a side languishing in mid-table of the Championship but they now sit at the high end of the division after narrowly missing out on promotion and achieving a playoff place in 2018/19.
Two years prior to that, however, Radrizzani took full ownership of Leeds, buying it outright from controversial owner Massimo Cellino.
It was a watershed moment for the Whites who are now firmly back on the right track, albeit without the Premier League to compete in.
The Italian businessman has put the west Yorkshire club back on the map and added the acquisition of Elland Road to his successes as he put the stadium in Leeds’ control for the first time since 2004.
However, on the transfer front, it hasn’t always been plain sailing.
The decisions they took in the summer – only bringing in six loan players – were a sign they may be learning but, ultimately, it was a major indictment of mistakes made in the market since he arrived.
Last week Managing Director Angus Kinnear revealed the might of Radrizzani when he spoke about the finances involved in terms of player salary.
He told the BBC: “The biggest thing to understand is how much the wage bill has grown under Andrea’s tenure. The wage bill when he took over was for a mid-table team and there was a correlation with how much you spend on the wage bill and where you finish.”
During his first summer at the helm, Leeds brought in a vast number of players, 14 of which were permanent signings.
Some of those did turn out to be a success. Pontus Jansson won a place in the PFA Team of the Year last season whilst Mateusz Klich had a hand in 19 goals. More arrivals included Ezgjan Alioski, Adam Forshaw and Tyler Roberts, with the latter two joining in January.
Despite that, there were some rather less impressive signatures and those poor judgement calls ultimately set the tone for Leeds’ most recent transfer activity.
This summer the club had to sell Jansson partly due to financial fair play reasons and because the wage bill had grown so much. Other faces also fled the scene.
In total, 31 players walked through the exit door either on a permanent or temporary basis and that sums up how wrong things have gone with some particular incomings.
In the same interview with the BBC last week, Kinnear noted the following: “If we were to have our time again, I think we expanded the squad a little too rapidly.
“Perhaps some of those purchases we made of players who were going to be two or three years away from a first-team place and were going to develop and were younger – I don’t think we’re going to see clubs in the Championship make those sorts of purchases.”
The reason for that, so Kinnear says, is because of FFP.
The dreaded ruling has already seen Birmingham deducted nine points last campaign and despite Leeds needing to improve when Radrizzani arrived, buying players with potential, rather than just for the present, might have been the wrong approach.
In the 2017 summer window, Leeds welcomed Samu Saiz, Laurens De Bock, Haidy Sacko, Jay-Roy Grot, Aapo Halme, Caleb Ekuban, Pawel Cibicki and Yosuke Ideguchi to Yorkshire.
Coincidentally, all of the above departed in 2019 either on loan or permanently.
It appears the focus for Leeds in the summer concerned departures as they took the approach of balancing the books and strategically improving their operations in the loan market.
Not landing anyone of note on a permanent basis in recent months could be perceived as a cause for concern, but it was due to mistakes made in the past that this didn’t happen.
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For better or for worse, over 30 players left and only six arrived on temporary terms.
It’s a tactic that has worked in the past, most recently for Aston Villa who were promoted with a host of loan players.
In their squad last term was Tyrone Mings, Axel Tuanzebe, Kortney Hause, Anwar El Ghazi and Tammy Abraham, all of whom helped them to gain promotion.
The Villans have set a mini benchmark that should give Leeds hope for the rest of the season.
So far their loan strategy has been a benefit. Ben White was named the PFA Fans’ Player of the Month whilst Eddie Nketiah and Helder Costa are pushing for first-team places after contributing to goals in the Carabao Cup.
Leeds have learnt well from their mistakes under Radrizzani and now with Marcelo Bielsa things are starting to come to fruition.
Errors may have been made but there is evidence to suggest they’re making up for it.
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