By Craig Scott

31st Jan, 2023 | 6:36pm

Stoke City in last-ditch bid to sign Leeds United centre-back Charlie Cresswell - Phil Hay

Stoke City are making a late bid to sign Leeds United centre-back Charlie Cresswell ahead of the 11pm deadline on Tuesday night, according to The Athletic journalist Phil Hay.

Writing on The Athletic’s deadline day blog on 31 January, Hay reported that Stoke are “exploring a late move” for the 20-year-old defender, who’s currently on loan at Millwall.

Leicester have agreed to sign Stoke’s Harry Souttar in a deal starting at £15million and England Under-21 international Cresswell has seemingly been lined up as a replacement.

Hands off

We’ll be gutted if Cresswell leaves Elland Road for good.

The on-loan Millwall defender is one of the best up-and-coming centre-backs in English football but we can see why he’d think he has no future at Leeds.

Even though Diego Llorente has already left to join Roma on deadline day, Leeds still have Liam Cooper, Robin Koch, Pascal Struijk, Max Wober, Leo Hjelde and deadline-day signing Diogo Monteiro potentially ahead of him in the pecking order.

Cresswell’s barely played for Millwall in recent weeks, which means he probably doesn’t want to stick around there for too long either.

Stoke are being dealt with a blow by Souttar leaving to join Leicester.

But Cresswell, on the long-term, will be a big upgrade for them because Leicester have seemingly fallen into the trap of signing a player just because he had a good World Cup with Australia.

Cresswell has been in and out of the Millwall side but he’s still someone with a massive future ahead of him and we really don’t want to see Leeds let him go.

In other Leeds United news, visit our live transfer blog for around-the-clock updates straight from Elland Road.