After weeks of speculation surrounding Marcelo Bielsa’s future at Elland Road, it must have been a relief to the vast majority of Leeds United fans when the Argentine put pen to paper on a new one year deal last Friday.
Having led the Whites to a fantastic third place finish in the Championship earlier this month on what was a relatively tight budget in comparison to some of their competitors, the 63-year-old will be looking to go one step better next season.
Yet in order to achieve success in the upcoming campaign, Bielsa must be given the freedom to bring in some top quality additions by chairman Andrea Radrizzani who has been reluctant to splash the cash since taking over at the club in 2017.
However, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post, the Whites may have to prioritise signing loan players over permanent additions in order to avoid breaching the EFL’s Financial Fair Play rules as they are currently on course register a £15m loss for the current financial year.
With journalist Phil Hay revealing the situation that the club find themselves in on Twitter, loads of Leeds fans reacted by urging for better recruitment.
We signed 4 premier league loanees last season and only one was useful. We absolutely must be better at that this season.
— Dan (@Danny_Slugsy) May 30, 2019
Perhaps the performance of Bielsa and Leeds last season may help with that search for better loans. Last season they would have been looking at a previous mid table club and an unknown entity as coach.
— Stephen Dalziel (@dalziel_stephen) May 30, 2019
Loan signings undid us this season. On paper all good signings but not really any of our new signings (including permanents) pulled up any trees, even Douglas, Bamford and Harrison could all be described as ‘patchy’. Recruitment needs to be a lot stronger.
— Tom Holynski (@ThommHol) May 30, 2019
Trouble is with loans Villa now have to stump up millions for their decent loan players that got them promoted. Derby have lost half a team. We are only affected by Harrison and have the nucleus of the squad that did well last year.
— Maze Hill matt (@mazehilluk) May 30, 2019
There’s good loans and then there is our loans
— Tim Apple (@DBauer191) May 30, 2019
Tricky thing is getting them to play out of their skin like their future depends on it every game, when in reality it doesn’t quite matter as much (although they still need to impress overall throughout their loan). In the bigger games they can go missing without much consequence
— El Grimmo (@VileAnimal1919) May 30, 2019
If this is the road we are going down, which it seems to be.. we need to make it count this season. Last season only Harrison did anything.
— Paul (@PJ82PJ) May 30, 2019
Maybe we should go for free agents also. The likes of Fer and Cranie.
— Jake Anderton (@JakeAnderton) May 30, 2019
Whereas joining Leeds on loan last season may have been seen as a risk by some players given Bielsa’s lack of experience in English football, the sterling job that he has done in promoting youth over the past 11 months could benefit his side’s prospects of bringing in some of the Premier League’s most exciting prospects this summer.
