Phil Hay discussed all the latest Leeds United news on the most recent edition of The Phil Hay Show and the journalist spent some time talking about the Whites’ failed pursuit of 18-year-old centre-back Josko Gvardiol.
Despite Leeds making a ‘higher offer’ for the Croat than RB Leipzig, it has been claimed that Gvardiol is set to join the German club instead of the Whites, with Fabrizio Romano recently claiming that ‘total agreement’ has been reached with regard to the player’s move to the Bundesliga side.
It was after failing to secure Gvardiol’s signature that Leeds turned their attention to Diego Llorente, who has now become the Yorkshire club’s seventh signing of the current transfer window.
During this recent edition of The Phil Hay Show, Hay talked about the Whites’ failed pursuit of Gvardiol. He shared that the club had been “hopeful” that they would be able to sign the player as of last weekend, and he went on to discuss how the signing of the Croat would have differed from the signing of Llorente.
He said: “They’d been looking at Josko Gvardiol at Dinamo Zagreb. Even as of last weekend, they were still talking about him and still quietly hopeful that that might be done, but he’s going to go to RB Leipzig by the looks of things.
“[He’s a] really, really big talent, but really different to Llorente – he’s a left-footer for starters, he’s 18 years old, so you’re talking about a much longer-term prospect as opposed to Llorente, who should be somewhere near his peak at 27 and has already played for Spain and has been at Real Madrid and played plenty of times for Real Sociedad, where Leeds are signing him from.
“So, you’re talking now about somebody who would be competition and cover for [Robin] Koch as opposed to competition and cover for Liam Cooper.
“It does feel like a bit of a deviation, definitely. Having done Koch, who was quite clearly going to be first-choice if he settled well, it feels as if you’re signing somebody else who, actually, deep down, would want to be first-choice as well.”
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As Hay explained, it does seem as though 27-year-old Llorente is more of a signing for the present, whereas 18-year-old Gvardiol may have been more of a signing for the future.
On top of that, Hay seems to believe that Gvardiol would have performed a different role in Bielsa’s side to the one he anticipates Llorente will play, with Llorente being right-footed and Gvardiol being left-footed.
It will be interesting to see how Llorente fits into Bielsa’s plans and hopefully, for the Whites, there is a logical explanation behind their decision to sign Llorente following their failure to sign Gvardiol and they don’t regret missing out on the 18-year-old to RB Leipzig too much.