Good Morning. It's Friday 11th August, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road New levels of incompetency as Gnonto move edges closer Leeds fans have been left dumbfounded, after reports emerged yesterday afternoon, that Wilfred Gnonto has agreed a five year contract with the Toffee's; a claim which is backed up by transfer guru Fabrizio Romano. According to Romano, Gnonto made himself unavailable for the Cup match midweek in an attempt to force Leeds hands. Everton believe they can secure his signature for £19m, and having witnessed Leeds transfer dealings thus far this Summer, who can blame them! Only yesterday, Leeds lost their midfield dynamo Tyler Adams for a paltry £20m to a club who wouldn't think twice about splashing the cash, if they needed to do so. We've seen the likes of Southampton and Leicester City playing hard ball, and recouping over twice these amounts for players with much shorter terms. In James Maddison's case, he only had 12 months left on his contract, but the Foxes were still able to command a £42m fee. Leeds are finding it difficult to recruit too. In the rare case they find a bargain, as in Max Aarons' case, Bournemouth came along, and plucked him from under Leeds' noses! Gnonto is only a year into his five year contract, and one of only a few Leeds players not to have a relegation clause. He is a fully fledged Italian International and at 19, has the potential to become one of Europe's rising stars of the future. Gnonto may have only cost £3.8m, but we also need to remember his former club FC Zurich have a substantial sell on clause. I'm sure Daniel Farke is not used to these levels of incompetency, and more or less said so during his press conference yesterday, stopping close to pointing the finger at those upstairs. How long can we expect him to stick around if things don't improve? please log in to view this image ER bomb hoaxer spared jail A man who made a hoax bomb threat, alleging he had planted an 'improvised explosive' in, or around the confines of the Elland Road Stadium, has been spared jail at Leeds Crown Court yesterday. Koli Boci, a local man from Hunslet, admitted visiting the club's Instagram account on Tuesday 4th April, stating “I have planted an improvised explosive.” This was followed-up moments later “Have fun guys.” Specialised officers then sprung into action, sealing off the area whilst a painstaking search took place. Boci, who was 20 at the time, described the incident as a “drunken, misjudged attempt at humour”. He failed to see the funny side of it when, hours later armed officers broke his front door down, and arrested him. Among his belongings, was a copy of “The Anarchist Cookbook”, a book that includes instructions on bomb-making. Nevertheless, his defence counsel convinced the judge that his client was a man of 'impeccable character' and 'posed no danger to the public'. He was given a £10,000 fine, and a suspended nine month sentence, and ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid community work. please log in to view this image
Morning everyone if we can get 20 million for silly willy after buying him for next to nothing i say that is good business.He has been over hyped and is far from international class. He failed to impress me at the Cardiff match unlike Ampadu who is far better. So hold out a bit longer for more money and let him have his dream move to Everton.
Yet another joke deal. His former club has a reportedly huge sell on deal which you'd assume is 30 or 40 percent leaving us with maybe 10m after paying agents fees to negotiate the contract. Don't care as club was run by muppets and likely still is. Ridiculous thing though was him jumping out of dugout and running half the length of the pitch to celebrate our equaliser when he was basically already gone. Laughable
Gnonto is a slippery snake of a ****. If what Jock says is true about him running behind our backs to secure the Everton transfer then he can **** off to Merseyside. Honestly I don't blame the 49ers on this one. This is Gnonto's fault especially as they've been saying for days that he's not for sale
So the dickhead bomber gets a £10k fine and community service whilst Victor Orta actually exploded a bomb and walked straight into another top job. Morning by the way
Personally if he refused to play for the club, we should get rid. Due to the sell on clause (whatever figure that is), I’d take the financial hit and park him in the 21’s for now. Presumably he will be stopped wages if he continues to refuse to play. Play hardball, there’s 3 weeks of the transfer window left. Someone will take him off our hands before the window closes, and hopefully we’ll get a much better price. As much as I can’t stand Everton, they would play him more, than say Chelsea, so might increase his resale value, and help us with any future sell on monies.
I've been speaking to a Zurich journalist on LinkedIn. This morning he has told me :- Kay Voser • August 11, 2023 at 8:49 AM Hi Matt, i don’t know the exact percentage of the sell out clause. But the president of FCZ said the sell on clause is extraordinary high. Kay
I read the interview the Swiss Director did just after we signed Gnonto. His words were that at some stage with luck (number of games played, goals scored) the price would be closer to €10m not pounds, euros. Not sure he’s played the games or scored the goals to reach the bonuses so guessing we won’t be handing over much. Yes I know Eire is hoping they get all the cash
Gnonto trained well yesterday and subject to doing the same today will be under consideration for Birmingham tomorrow. Farke seeemd happy enough to include him as long as his attitude is correct.
Sheff Utd along with Luton are almost certain to go down. Shame we didn't stay up as this season in the PL would have likely been easier for us.
It was clear by Farke's comments that he didn't know whether the short arsed bastard would make himself available on Saturday.
Wondering if Lewis Bate has caught the eye of FARKE, because although seemingly small he can play anywhere in the middle, can dribble, pass and score goals. He’s actually a classy player and was Oxfords best player last season, although why he was sent there instead of a Championship side?
People say the table doesn't lie but it bends the truth sometimes in terms of sides capabilities. The 3 relegated sides last year all had goalkeepers (and in our case defenders) who were really struggling and strikers misfiring. They weren't the worst 3 sides in terms of chances created for and against. So Forest and Bournemouth who were in my opinion the worst two sides I saw last season (though both improved a bit as the season progessed) stayed up - and better teams went down. Meanwhile a very weak championship saw a well organised but limited blunts team and a very well managed but even more limited Luton side get promoted, while some better footballing sides got off to poor starts and couldn't close the gap. PL weaker this year, Championship stronger.
Just by way of playing devil advocate in the interests of debate, if we say that a lot of players we get linked to are click bait made up rubbish why do we believe Gnonto has agreed a five year deal with Everton as surely this means they have broken FA rules and announcing that if we haven’t given them permission. Admittedly the source of the story is very credible.
Should the club sack the social media guy because I’m sick of seeing him tweet out shyt like: the club would like to wish xxxx a successful time at his new club bollox. Why not just: don’t let the door slam into your arse on the way out
Gnonto did not refuse to play, that's Scum loving media bull designed to "unbalance" Leeds ... in fact, Leeds have told Everton Willy is not for sale, they are now trying to sign a Sporting player instead There are a lot of fake Leeds accounts on social media spreading lies and constantly dissing the club and players to cause division I say fk them all, let's see what the club's plans are player wise and focus on backing the team regardless And finally I'll say this one more time, Victor Orta did a superb job for Leeds ... he came in at a time when the club was on it's knees and unable to attract players, no Academy and definitely not in any kind of shape to get to the Prem ... the first thing he did was sign a bunch of youngsters for the Academy to get it up and running again, and put in place a structure to get Leeds Prem Academy status ... this was vital, because it not only meant Leeds would compete against better quality opposition, but the club would also receive funding for the Academy, allowing it to start attracting quality players Struijk and Meslier were among the first slate of youngsters signed and look how well they've progressed ... Gelhardt, Perkins, Joseph, Bate, Gyabi, Drameh, Poveda etc are all developing into good pros ... Monteiro is highly rated as well, and Portugal expect him to become one of their leading internationals in five years time ... then there's genuinely quality talents like Gnonto and Rutter, both still babies but clearly enormously gifted and here on 5 year deals Orta managed to get Bielsa to come to Leeds, an incredible achievement ... he also signed Raphinha when all the top clubs were asleep at the wheel ... bought for £17m and sold for £60m was superb business ... the majority of Orta's signings have been quality, there are reasons why some haven't worked out but that's football ... that red nosed nob from across t'Pennines said that if, across your career, 40% of your signings have done well, you've done an excellent job And red nose should know ... he let Pogba go for fk all and then Scum had to pay £90m to get him back ... he also famously told Gerard Pique he'd never make it as a footballer and released him on a free ... the lad joined Barcelona and went on to win League, Cup and European trophies, as well as a European Championship and a World Cup ... now if ever there was a gigantic fk up this is it As for relegation clauses, that's how it is in the Prem ... Farke can take the moral high ground and claim that previous contracts were bad with release clauses, but he's not going to sign quality players in the Prem if these clauses aren't agreed ... Brighton had a £35m release clause in Mac Allister's contract, and after the WC it was clear they would lose him for that low value when he could easily have gone for £80m-plus Transfers are not an exact science, ask Arsenal how they feel about paying £70m for Nicolas Pepe and sticking him on £200k a week only for him to bomb completely ... now they can't sell him and nobody will cover his full wages on a loan deal ... last season they shipped him off to Nice on loan (just 19 appearances) where they would have paid max £40k a week of his wages with no loan fee or fee to buy ... now he's back at Highbury with little chance of playing an a very expensive problem for Arteta, who doesn't want him The thing about Leeds having the loan clauses in place means it makes it easier to get those wages off the books quickly, and potentially protect player values if Leeds can get back to the Prem immediately ... without loan clauses it would have been a release fee clause at a figure lower than expected The loan clauses also help to shift players if nobody is willing to put money on the table and buy them ... so the club saves millions in wages, there's potential to sell them a year later and there's also millions coming in via loan fees ... what's not to like? Relegation is a pig, it constricts your ability in the transfer market and leaves you vulnerable to losing key players ... it also restricts your ability to flash the cash as FFP compliance is a must The only thing Orta did "wrong" was to flash a V-sign at the trolls, bullies and abusers ... I'm with him on this one, the fkn cowards got off lightly if you ask me ... Jesse Marsch was his only real footballing error ... the club got sold a style that was going to be akin to Bielsa Ball and ended up watching a massive penis strangling the life out of Leeds every Saturday ... that must have been painful, and it was no surprise that he resigned when Radz & Kinnear decided Big Sam was the right man to step in ... no DoF worth anything would ever stand by and allow that fkn dinosaur into their club ... another stain on the Leeds name, along with Warnock et al As for Radz and Kinnear, they were the one's with sign-off power on every deal, from transfer fees to contract values and clauses ... Orta only recommended players and staff, and ensured the club understood the financial demands to get deals done, after which it was down to the CEO and Chairman to agree the money side ... Radz trying to play dumb is shameful, him blaming Orta lacks class ... how Kinnear is still at Leeds is a mystery Time to bin all the constant whining, finger pointing and blaming Orta ... he is still a very highly respected DoF within the game, he has a brilliant network of contacts and he truly has an eye for spotting talent ... I'm grateful for what he did for Leeds, without him we'd never have made it out of the Champs or attracted investors like 49ers ... we'd never have enjoyed winning at Citeh and Anfield, or marvelled at Raphinha pensioning off Gary Cahill ... thanks Victor, good luck at Sevilla, you did a superb job at Leeds even while being hampered financially by a cautious owner Now, let's get behind the squeaky Hun and drive this club to promotion
