Leeds United will need to make Kemar Roofe one of the club’s highest earners to get him to commit to a new contract with the club, according to Phil Hay.
Roofe revealed last weekend he is keen to stay at Elland Road but revealed talks are yet to open over a deal to replace his current agreement, which expires in the summer of 2020.
Yorkshire Evening Post correspondent Hay explained on his Inside Elland Road podcast how the player will need to be rewarded with a far more lucrative deal to stay.
“Roofe is going up and up in terms of his standard. The need for him to get a new contract seems ever more apparent,” Hay told the Inside Elland Road podcast (13:40). “No talks with him yet. The plan was for them to start in the new year and they are absolutely going to have to get on with that.
“They’re going to have to make him one of the club’s highest earners. They’re going to have to give him something close to parity with Patrick Bamford, because, quite honestly, there is only one of them pushing this season.”
OPINION
Leeds should be braced for difficult negotiations with Roofe. The player is manoeuvring himself into an increasingly strong position ahead of talks that are expected to get underway in the new year. Quite why Leeds have left them until this long is baffling. All the while they stall and delay, Roofe’s current deal is expiring and his standing is rocketing. The 25-year-old has scored 13 goals in the league this season, including two remarkable stoppage-time winners in the last two games. He is in the form of his life and is certain to be attracting interest from Premier League clubs. They will have noted his mobility, increasingly effective hold-up play and his skill in and around the box. Roofe is no one-trick pony, either. He can shoot well with both feet and is a clean header of the ball, as he demonstrated with his last-second Boxing Day winner against Blackburn Rovers. With Bamford said to be earning £30,000-a-week, it may require a similar deal to keep Roofe.