Leeds United looked at Chelsea forward Kenedy to replace Summerville
Leeds United looked at signing Kenedy from Chelsea to replace Crysencio Summerville if he left in January, according to The Athletic journalist Phil Hay.
Summerville, 20, was strongly linked with a loan move to Hamburg in the latter stages of January, with Hay also adding now that AZ Alkmaar were also keen on the Dutch winger.
The ex-Yorkshire Evening Post journalist is baffled by Leeds’ approach regarding Summerville and feels it’s unique at Elland Road that they would eye Liverpool’s Takumi Minamino and Chelsea’s Kenedy as a replacement for an Under-23s player.
“With Summerville you had this strange situation where there was interest in him from Hamburg in Germany and Alkmaar in Holland were mentioned to me as well, they obviously want him because there are plenty of clubs who rate him,” said Hay on the latest episode of The Phil Hay Show [4 February, 15m16s].
“And what you had was a situation, which I think from a distance was really peculiar, which you’re saying, ‘ideally we keep Summerville because he’s right for us and we want him in the squad. But if he goes and insists on going and we let him leave, the sort of person we might get to fill his boots is Minamino at Liverpool.’
“That leaves people thinking, on the one hand, you’ve got a young winger who’s played a minimal number of first-team games. And in order to sort of ‘cover’ for him, you sign a Japan international who’s played at a really high level with Salzburg and at Liverpool.
“Leeds are probably the only club in the world where an unwanted departure of an academy player, leads to interest in Minamino at Liverpool. It could look very back-to-front. And they did look at Kenedy at Chelsea as well.”
Weird
It’s got to be Marcelo Bielsa behind this school of thought because no one does left-field approaches to the game quite like the Argentine.
However, can he, nor Victor Orta, not see the major problem here?
If Summerville, an inexperienced 20-year-old winger, left Elland Road, the two players who Leeds looked at to replace him were internationals with way more experience in club football and could also play in multiple positions.
It tells you one thing instantly – the club know they are short on experienced players.
If Summerville was loaned out, we didn’t even need to replace him – he hasn’t even been made in Bielsa’s last two matchday squads in the Premier League and there’s plenty of cover on the right-wing if Raphinha’s ever unavailable.
We cannot make sense of this.
Loaning out Summerville and replacing him with Minamino would have been a massive upgrade on the squad – you wouldn’t leave Minamino out so he could play with the Under-23s.
In other Leeds United news, a journalist has mooted financial issues at Elland Road.