After 5 years as Leeds Director of Football, everyone has an opinion on Victor Orta. Those that defend his record point to Leeds’ promotion, the wild success of the Bielsa Hail Mary, and some bargain signings along the way. To others, the expensive duds and failure to sign players in key positions make him a villain. As expected, nuance has gone AWOL, but more importantly the context around Leeds’ squad and strategy is often overlooked.
The first brief after taking over was to build a squad to get Leeds United out of the division, and quickly. The squad he inherited had a healthy age profile, with some quality in their early-mid peak or just about to come into it (Jansson, Dallas, Ayling, Wood, Cooper & Roofe). Alongside that, there were some young players who seemed to have the potential to make it at this level, in Phillips, Mowatt, Coyle and Vieira. Pablo & Berardi make up the rest of the core of what could be considered a top 6 Championship team.
All in all, a solid core of 12 to build around but lacking in quality in depth, somewhat unbalanced and Leeds being in the Championship were in need of selling 1 top asset per year to balance the books & allow themselves to increase the wage bill in search of promotion.
Fast forward 3 years, mission accomplished. Wood, Roofe and Vieira have been sold for financial reasons, Lewie Coyle & Mowatt never made the step up to Leeds’ first team while Pontus was shipped out at Bielsa’s behest. The remaining 6, with the exception of Phillips, are now in the 2nd half of their peak and have been supplemented with Klich, Douglas, Alioski and Forshaw in similar age ranges. Leeds United are back in the Premier League, and in need of a complete rebuild in the next 4 years.
The amount of squad turnover required in the Premier League can be seen easily from the age profile above. The core of the squad is 27 & above, and there’s little coming in behind. Only 4 players are aged 21-26 at the start of the promotion season, and while there are a number of teenagers getting minutes, many of them won’t go on to make it at Premier League level. Almost 60% of the outfield minutes in the promotion season were from players 28 and above at the start of the first PL season – almost an entirely new squad in the next 3-4 years is required.
The strategy has revolved around 2 pillars. Supplement the squad with first-team-ready players largely in the 23-26 age range, and sweep up as much elite youth as possible. The key is to stay in the division while navigating our way through this transition. Fast forward another 3 years, and we can see the bulk of this new squad is now in place. The promotion squad has largely aged out, been sold or not made the jumps to the first team. Bamford & Harrison are the only peak age survivors, while Struijk & Meslier have established themselves in the first team. The rest is new.
What’s clear, however, is that while Leeds have done the bulk of the work in navigating this transition, it is by no means finished. As the squad has aged, the percentage of minutes being taken by peak-age players has dropped season on season. Meanwhile, we can see the proportion made up by 22-23 year olds has increased to compensate. So while Leeds have successfully navigated the bulk of their transition work, the next window of success isn’t yet open.
Where does this leave Leeds in terms of squad building? Projecting the current squad forward over the next 4 seasons (allowing post-peak contracts to expire), we can see the makings of a good squad in place.
In my view, the window for Leeds success opens in 24/25, and to get there they need 5 more additions over the next 4 windows. These are two left-backs, a right-back, a centre-midfielder and a striker replacing Dallas, Firpo, Ayling, Forshaw and Rodrigo respectively. This would leave us with the following 25-man squad for 2024/25:
Taking the long view, it’s clear to me that we should evaluate Leeds’ recruitment with the 24/25 season in mind, rather than the immediate impact on any forthcoming season. Get these 5 signings right and Leeds are in a great place, with a young, talented and well-balanced squad that can punch way above its financial muscle. Get them wrong, and the amount of work Leeds has to do increases significantly – delaying success & using valuable resources.
Front of mind should be the experience of Dan James & Firpo, two expensive failures who were both signed with the medium-term in mind. These have set the squad back by approximately £40m and two further signings required.
It would be negligent to not do enough to keep Leeds in the Premier League in the next 2 seasons, and thus ruin this opportunity. But it would also be negligent to waste valuable resources on short-term sticking plasters that will need replacing again in the next 2 years. It’s a fine balancing act, but if we stay in the division this year and the next, then Leeds are on track for success.
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