By Craig Scott

16th Jun, 2022 | 10:48am

Leeds United want to sign Manchester City midfielder Romeo Lavia, Kalvin Phillips swap mooted

Leeds United are in the hunt to sign young Manchester City midfielder Romeo Lavia, according to The Athletic.

The news outlet reported on Thursday (16 June) that Southampton are also keen on signing the 18-year-old defensive midfielder, who plays for the Belgium Under-21s national team.

It is understood that Manchester City rate Lavia highly and are “reluctant” to let him leave this summer.

However, The Athletic interestingly claims that Man City could use Lavia as a makeweight in a player-plus-cash deal to sign Kalvin Phillips from Leeds.

Interesting

It seems increasingly likely that Man City will make a move for Phillips this summer and with the direction they’re going in under Pep Guardiola, it’s hard to see how he’d turn a move down to the Etihad.

Phillips could be a Premier League winner and a Champions League winner within a year at Man City, that’s how he’s likely to look at it.

But with Leeds, there’s still uncertainty as to how Jesse Marsch will do as manager in his first full season in charge with a pre-season and a transfer window under his belt.

We could well be in another relegation battle next season.

As for Flavia, The Athletic have certainly made him out to be a good young player.

While we highly doubt that he’d be a straight-up replacement for Phillips if a player-plus-cash deal is completed, The Athletic does claim that Man City “believe he will one day be at the required level to play in their first team”.

That’s a big, big shout, especially when City are trying to sign Phillips and also have Rodri in their team.

We’ll see how this pans out but it doesn’t seem as though anything is concrete just yet.

It would, however, be nice to get him in the squad.

In other Leeds United news, the Whites have verbally agreed a deal for a Spanish club to make a windfall due to a 20 per cent transfer clause.