Caprile spent two years at Elland Road between 2020 and 2022, but the Italian shot-stopper was unable to push ahead of Illan Meslier in the pecking order in Yorkshire. Difficult, so who do you keep?
Both as most PL teams have two good keepers and the third choice is usually pretty decent too. I did say Jury is out, so it’s debatable masterstroke or mistake?
always a bit of a balancing act with keepers… very few sides have two ‘top’ keepers. Second/3rd choice is usually: - a youngster not there yet, - a guy on the way down happy for a cheque… - or someone who just isn’t bothered if they don’t play much if the pay is good. - someone who has been ‘replaced’ but hasn’t moved on yet I don’t know whether we bought klaessen because caprile was demanding game time and/or wanted to move back to Italy- or whether we moved him on because we thought klaessen was better. Either way we seem to have adopted this strategy of letting youth go cheap but with significant sell ons. Huggins went for free when you’d have expected a few quid, etc. whichever, not sure I’d call it a master stroke.
Caprile was out on loan for the last 2 1/2 seasons after being the academy No1 and winning the league and cup etc. so Klaessen was bought without even considering Caprile which could have been a mistake. Some very strange things have happened with our keeping department since 2018: Kiko No1 and Meslier No2. In the academy we have Miazek and Caprile. We offload Peacock-Farrel and Will Huffer who was an England U21 player Miazek was promoted to No2 when Kiko was suspended We had Blackford from Chelsea who got badly injured We brought in the Aussie kid Cooper Skerry From being Bielsa’s No2 we allow Kamil Miazek to leave on a freebie. He had been at the club since 2017 and was a Polish U19 player he was also our best penalty shot stopper. Kiko loaned out Meslier now No1 Klaessen brought in Skerry was allowed to leave Caprile found no way back Van Den Hueval Huaevel brought in Harry Christie signs his first pro contract Ombang brought in from Bradford Van den Hueval breaks neck Christy keeps for the 21s he’s now 19yo Ombang keeps for the 18s and 21s he’s 17yo Van Den Huaeval now back and playing again
The night I met my wife, she was wearing a green top and orange gloves, straight away I knew she was a keeper.
The comings and goings are plentiful so it does get confusing but I'm not sure the timelines are all correct above. Jan 2019 we get kiko, as blackman broke his leg and BPF had made a few mistakes. Turns out kiko isn't an improvement. BPF left summer 2019 - he wanted to leave, but he was replaced by Meslier, so that worked out pretty well. Miazek was really just a 23s/squad player and though he made the bench, was never more than 3rd choice for first team when everyone was fit, before being released. He's in the polish lower leagues now. I thought we signed caprile in 2020, he was the 23s keeper. then summer 2021 we loaned him out - at the same time Klaessen came. So one was clearly the replacement for the other... as to the why? genuinely no idea. Agree with the principle though, behind Mes (and there's rumours about him), there's been a lot of chopping and changing. Hopefully with Robles and Klaessen we now have decent understudies.
