Three reasons Leeds United didn’t sign any players on loan

Follow us on Google Discover

The loan deadline has passed, and Leeds United pushed ahead with outgoings rather than incomings.

The Football League emergency loan deadline has passed, quietly from an incoming perspective for Leeds United.

The club were one of the Championship’s busiest teams in the summer, bringing in 15 players.

Here is a look at three potential reasons they have elected not to push ahead with any loan deals:

Finances and squad size

This window was all about one thing for Leeds, cutting back. The club’s squad is too bloated, a result of manager turnover over the past 18 months, and players rated by Brian McDermott and Dave Hockaday simply don’t fit in under Neil Redfearn. It’s been about cutting back, moving players on, who can potentially seal permanent deals away from the club in January. This will give the club’s wage bill some breathing room, and open up opportunities to add new faces at a later date, but now it simply may not have been considered practical.

Young talent

Leeds have a number of players waiting in the wings, who could follow in the footsteps of Lewis Cook and Alex Mowatt to the first team. Neil Redfearn knows how to get the best out of them, and will have the opportunity to assess them better over the next couple of months rather than if he had signed players. Chris Dawson, Calvin Phillips and Charlie Taylor are all in the mix, as is Brian Montenegro, a regular scorer for the under-21s, who can crucially play out wide on the wing. This is a time for Leeds to find out more about what they already have.

Loan players already at the club

Could Massimo Cellino not actually be a fan of loan deals? The Yorkshire Post report: “United chairman Massimo Cellino has spoken at length of how he does not like using the loan market to bring players in”. Leeds do however have Adryan, Zan Benedici, Dario del Fabro and Brian Montenegro on loans, but only one has made the first team – and even then the popular Brazilian playmaker took more than two months to get up to speed. If this is how Cellino feels, then the recent deals are unlikely to have changed his mind.