For Leeds United to get straight back to the Premier League after their final day relegation to the Championship, the club need to be studious both in their transfer dealings and their managerial hire.
It may well be a chicken and egg situation for now for the Elland Road outfit, given that they don’t have a sporting director in place at present.
Andrea Radrizzani remains the owner of the club at this point, though it’s thought that he could be close to selling up to 49ers Enterprises.
Regardless of who is in charge of the club, the difficulty arises if players come up for sale in the time before a sporting director and manager are in place, and they are players that it’s believed the club could benefit from.
Do they really take the risk of securing any players only to find that a manager may arrive who decides that said player or players isn’t for him?
It wouldn’t be the wisest way to do business, though it appears that Leeds have been considering different avenues already.
According to the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Graham Smyth, he has been hounded incessantly by an agent desperate to get his client in at Leeds.
“Sometimes you do get requests from young lads who want a chance to play football who say can you help me sign for Leeds,” he said on the Inside Elland Road Podcast.
“I had someone recently asking if they can coach at Leeds. I had contact from an agent, and it speaks to the fact that Orta has gone and this person probably wasn’t sure about who he could get into at Leeds to put the player forward, but they want to put the player forward.
“They have a couple of Championship suitors for this player, who is playing abroad, and they would like for him to play for Leeds next season.
“I did a bit of due diligence, I saw a passport and some evidence that this agent was who they said they were, and I passed on the details. If that player ever signs for Leeds then we’ll make it all about us.”
The fact that the club would even be considering taking note of a player’s details given to them by a journalist is deeply concerning.
On that basis alone, it would seem that time is very much of the essence in terms of Leeds getting their acts together behind the scenes.