Graham Potter shares big update on Ben White deal at Leeds
Brighton manager Graham Potter has confirmed that Ben White will see out the rest of the season on loan at Leeds United.
White, 22, has been one of the best players at Elland Road this term and has without doubt been the best centre-back in the whole of the Championship.
The Athletic journalist David Ornstein made a rather worrying claim about White’s loan deal with Leeds last month.
The former BBC Sport reporter said that Brighton might want White to return to the AMEX on June 30 when his loan spell at Elland Road officially ends.
However, Potter’s latest quotes suggest that will not happen and White will remain at Leeds for the final nine matches of the season before discussions are held about his long-term future on the south coast.
“All the guys who are on loan will stay and finish their loan spells,” said Potter, as quoted by the Yorkshire Evening Post.
“Then we will us discuss at the end of the season what the next plan is for them.
“Each individual is different, of course, and we will make those decisions at the end of the season.”
If Leeds lost White at the end of June then it would have been a huge blow.
Although we would have still had plenty of faith in Liam Cooper and Gaetano Berardi to shore up the back-line and help finish the job of sealing promotion, a Leeds side without White simply wouldn’t have been the same.
Leeds have a seven-point gap between themselves and third so there’s a sizeable margin for error in the remaining nine games of the season.
But we’d like to see that seven-point gap extend, not shrink, and the latter would have been more likely if White went back to Brighton.
Fortunately, that is not going to be the case.
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