Phil Hay has been speaking about Leeds United’s pursuit of Brenden Aaronson last month.
Leeds set their sights on one target and one target only in January, with Aaronson identified as the man wanted by Marcelo Bielsa, however, a bid of £20 million was not even entertained by RB Salzburg.
Who would be a better fit for Leeds?
Forshaw!
Aaronson!
However, while they lodged two bids, which showed a willingness to try and get a deal done and shows fans they were trying to get business over the line, Hay has revealed that their pursuit was doomed to begin with.
Hay revealed on The Phil Hay Show that Leeds had very little chance of signing Aaronson from the very beginning.
“There was the initial bid for £15 million that was upped to £20 million. The second bid that went to Salzburg, they barely responded to and barely paid any attention to.
“It was very much their way of saying this guy is not for sale, he’s not going to be leaving in this window – that was pretty much the message that they’d been giving locally in the build-up to the transfer window and it didn’t change at any stage.
“I’m absolutely certain that there would have come a price whereby they would have said, ‘look, that’s great money for Aaronson, let’s take it’.
“But I think the feeling at Leeds was that the premium on top of his actual value would have been a good £5m-10m, and in the end, they didn’t go back with a third offer because it was pretty clear that Salzburg were not going to negotiate, or were not going to make it easy, and were probably not going to do a deal, full stop.”
TIF Thoughts on Leeds United’s pursuit of Brenden Aaronson…
The 21-year old has only ever played in MLS and the Austrian Bundesliga, however, Bielsa and Leeds were clearly determined to land him, which should come as no surprise when you look at how he compares to players from the top five European leagues in a similar position to him when it comes to pressuring the ball, as he averages 27.84 pressures per game – putting him within the top 1% of players (FBRef).
However, if Leeds were indeed told from the very start of the window that Aaronson was not for sale and that RB Salzburg wanted to keep him ahead of their Champions League campaign, they could have saved their time and potentially attempted to land someone else, even on a temporary basis to help cover during Kalvin Phillips’ absence.
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