The Athletic’s Phil Hay has been responding to a fan on Twitter who claimed that the club should have sold Patrick Bamford and kept hold of Kemar Roofe instead.
Hay claims Leeds United acted too slowly with regards to offering Roofe a contract extension and at the time, the player wanted ‘parity’ with Bamford. Belgian giants Anderlecht then came in with an offer for the 27-year-old and at that point, it was ‘game over’.
they were too slow to get onto a contract extension with Roofe (who then, understandably, wanted parity with Bamford). Once Anderlecht came in, it was game over.
— Phil Hay (@PhilHay_) June 23, 2020
A transfer fee of £5.4m was agreed with the Whites to take Roofe to Lotto Park and that was the end of the matter. Bamford, meanwhile, has been a regular for Marcelo Bielsa’s side this season, starting in 95% of the club’s league fixtures so far (as per Transfermarkt.co.uk).
To date, he has scored 13 goals, which is two fewer than the 15 Roofe managed in the 2018/19 season, according to Transfermarkt.co.uk.
Do you wish Leeds had kept Roofe over Bamford?
Yes
No
TIF Thoughts…
The Whites returned to action at Cardiff City on Sunday and suffered a disappointing 2-0 defeat at the hands of Neil Harris’ men. Bamford led the line for the Yorkshire-based club and his display earned him a disappointing performance rating of 5.62/10, according to WhoScored.com.
In our view, Bamford’s disappointing showing at the weekend, along with the frustration amongst the fanbase with regards to the outcome of the recent fixture has led to this fan wishing they had kept hold of Roofe instead. However, as illustrated above by the statistics, in terms of their goal returns, the players have produced very similar outputs.