LUFCTALK

PhoenixUnited wrote:A number of players jumped (or were they given a push) ship in recent times and basically floundered. Byram, Lewis Coyle, Charlie Taylor et al. I can understand it from the point of view that there were life-changing contracts on offer or at least double, triple or quadruple your income at the stroke of a pen. Money talks.

After that how much does it matter that the player does not get a game week in week out?

I am getting old! Anyone want to name the last player that we sold that made the big time or has had a glittering or successful career? James Milner would come into that category but after that I am struggling

Another Northern Soul wrote:

PhoenixUnited wrote:A number of players jumped (or were they given a push) ship in recent times and basically floundered. Byram, Lewis Coyle, Charlie Taylor et al. I can understand it from the point of view that there were life-changing contracts on offer or at least double, triple or quadruple your income at the stroke of a pen. Money talks.

After that how much does it matter that the player does not get a game week in week out?

I am getting old! Anyone want to name the last player that we sold that made the big time or has had a glittering or successful career? James Milner would come into that category but after that I am struggling

Those three and quite a few before them (this century) certainly were pushed, you missed Cook off the list, mate

Cook was doing well until serious injury, Delph has done well despite a few injuries. I think Taylor will make a better name for himself and of course Wood has done well in the Prem (I don't really know HOW though )

Kasper Schmeichel too, and weirdly enough he wasn't looking to move but I'm sure he's glad he did

Barlow Boy wrote:To be fair to Charlie Taylor, he is first choice left back in a Premier League side, that’s not bad at all for a lad his age.

Another Northern Soul wrote:

PhoenixUnited wrote:Kasper Schmeichel too, and weirdly enough he wasn't looking to move but I'm sure he's glad he did

A 12-word tweet announced Pontus Jansson’s exit from Leeds United; no frills, no explanation and no affectionate goodbye. As ever with transfers, the less a club says the more you can infer about the politics behind a parting of ways.
Jansson’s departure was coming and no mistake after a disagreement over the timing of his return for pre-season but the speed and price of his sale to Brentford had the hallmarks of an uneasy partnership which neither camp wanted to prolong. Jansson was cast as a Premier League footballer in waiting during three years at Elland Road but took the offer of a move to a rival Championship team with more than a month of the transfer window to go. “I felt early on that Brentford was right for me,” he said.
Leeds felt the same, even though Brentford’s payment of £5.5 million was lower than Jansson’s perceived value and half the fee offered by Russian club Krasnodar a year earlier. There was interest this summer from Celta Vigo and Toulouse but Jansson wanted to stay in England and only Brentford were bidding. By the time negotiations began, Leeds’ head coach, Marcelo Bielsa, had taken the stance that Jansson should leave at the earliest opportunity.
The relationship between Jansson and Bielsa was never quite right. Bielsa appreciated Jansson’s defensive brain and rated the centre back as “our best player in the Championship” last season but felt less enamoured by his attitude. Jansson respected Bielsa’s reputation and admired his impact at Leeds but found the Argentinian’s detached personality and social reticence peculiar.
Bielsa is famously withdrawn, a coach with limited English who rarely mixes with his players outside of training or speaks to them about anything other than football. For most in the squad, his manner is part of his mystique and no obstacle to enjoying his work. “I always liked having a close relationship with my trainer,” Jansson told Swedish outlet Aftonbladet. “It’s not been as easy with Bielsa and the language (barrier) is a cause.”
There were flashpoints involving Jansson at various stages of his career with Leeds: a training-ground incident involving Matt Grimes which angered some of Grimes’ team-mates and prompted former manager Garry Monk to drop Jansson for a key league fixture against Brighton; a head injury away at Preston North End which Preston manager Alex Neil accused Jansson of faking; comments in the Swedish press which, unintentionally or otherwise, fuelled speculation about transfers; an incident against Aston Villa in April when Jansson sought to disregard Bielsa’s order to allow Villa to score an unopposed goal; and his reaction to defeat by Derby County in the Championship play-off semi-finals in May.
Jansson missed the first leg of that tie through injury and was not used in the second, a brilliant but excruciating match which Leeds lost five minutes from the end. At full-time Jansson took himself off and sat alone on the pitch, attracting the gaze of photographers and creating images which dominated post-match media coverage.
Some in Bielsa’s squad were unhappy with that, the sense of one player drawing attention to himself at the end of a year which owed everything to collective effort, though several of Jansson’s colleagues have spoken highly of him since he was sold. The truth about Jansson is that the flaws in his character, some which he would admit to, are counterbalanced by a talent for fierce and ruthless defending, a talent which was recognised by his inclusion in the EFL’s Championship team of the year in 2017 and the PFA’s team of the year last season. The latter, significantly, was chosen through votes cast by other EFL professionals.
When Bielsa was appointed by Leeds in June 2018, Jansson was abroad at the World Cup with Sweden, appearing as a substitute in their quarter-final defeat to England. Bielsa told him to take time off at the end of the tournament and return when he was ready but did not expect Jansson to be absent for three weeks. Other defenders were more up to speed with Bielsa’s methods and conditioning requirements and when the season began, Liam Cooper and Gaetano Berardi started as the club’s first-choice centre-back pairing. The door only opened to Jansson when Berardi injured a knee at the end of August.
Again this summer, international duty took Jansson away with Sweden and he was unimpressed by the suggestion that he should be back at Thorp Arch for the start of pre-season training on June 24. He wanted Leeds’ other internationals to request an extended leave of absence but Northern Ireland’s Stuart Dallas and Bailey Peacock-Farrell reported in on day one and the rest accepted an additional week’s holiday. Frustrated by Jansson’s stance, Leeds wrote to him and told him not to appear at their training ground until July 12, the day before Bielsa’s squad flew to Australia for two friendlies, one against Manchester United. It was a transparent message: that Jansson would miss the tour down under and in terms of Bielsa’s strict standards of preparation, would miss the boat again.
Sources close to Jansson say the letter sent to him implied that he might be sacrificed for the purposes of balancing the books and Bielsa gave the same explanation at his pre-season press conference on Friday. Leeds, though, sold Jack Clarke to Tottenham Hotspur for £9.7 million at the start of last month and in doing so, took the sting out of pressure caused by Financial Fair Play (FFP) restrictions. The fee for Jansson strengthened their accounts further but having sacrificed Clarke, Bielsa was not obliged to let him go. A return date of July 12 was the club’s way of telling Jansson that his head coach would crack on without him. By then Jansson had come to be viewed as a disruptive influence.
Jansson would not deny that he made errors of judgment at Leeds and he spoke more than once about needing to mature after coming to England from Torino. It might be that he has further to go in that respect but Leeds know they have relinquished a very accomplished centre half. For all that Bielsa’s fast, fluent football challenged Jansson’s technical skill, he and Liam Cooper ranked two and three in the Championship for interceptions, aiding the turnover of possession which Bielsa looks for. And in spite of the surprise about Jansson joining Brentford, the west London club are better than most at increasing the value of players they sign.
Complex characters in dressing rooms are nothing new, and nothing new at Leeds. There was an occasion in 2009 when the club’s squad made a visit to a local school and Jermaine Beckford broke protocol by failing to wear the correct training gear. Leeds let that go because Beckford was scoring goals for fun and duly chipped in a cool, injury-time winner at home to Norwich City three days later. Simon Grayson, his manager, was happy to make occasional allowances.
It is interesting to wonder what Bielsa would have made of Beckford. Would the forward’s ceaseless finishing have compensated for the odd idiosyncrasy? Or would Bielsa have seen his individualism as something of a problem, as it ultimately was with Jansson? At its very root, Jansson’s transfer to Brentford was a demonstration of Bielsa’s philosophy and outlook, that of a lifelong socialist who would probably relate to an in vogue socialist slogan: for the many, not the few.