Hamer, Buendia, McAtee and Leeds United's inability to better Aaronson this summer

Leeds United were unable to find any available player better than Brenden Aaronson to fill their vacant number 10 slot in this summer’s transfer window. Angus Kinnear has spoken out at length about the past 12 months at Elland Road and put plenty more meat on the bones of this past summer’s business.

Elland Road’s chief executive has spoken to fanzine The Square Ball in an exclusive interview that goes over an immense amount of ground. Transfers inevitably dominated much of the conversation, especially with the summer window not long in the rear-view mirror.

On the whole, Kinnear would give United a B+ grade for the business they carried out this summer. He touched upon the importance of finding players desperate to play for the Whites, like Joe Rodon, but also the difficulty in securing that elusive number 10 option.

Daniel [Farke] is incredibly collaborative,” said Kinnear. “We're very lucky to have him as a manager. He's been really, really balanced and not only do you see the results he gets, you see how he works at Thorp Arch, how he works with the players.

“We've got an exceptionally talented manager, which is why he's proven to be one of the best at this level. He is exactly the right manager for where Leeds United are now. In recruitment discussions, there's always tension and there should be tension.

“It's healthy there is tension between the data team and the scouting team and the coaching staff and the manager and the ownership, but we had really good, constructive dialogue with Daniel. There are no players everybody wasn't fully aligned on before we secured them.

“The process is much more collaborative than it has been historically. Everybody has a say, but Daniel and the recruitment team knew the board supported us, pretty much, unconditionally in terms of the players we targeted and the players that were available to us.

“I'd probably give us a B+ if I were to grade the window in terms of what we wanted to do. We got our first choice right-sided centre-half. One of the themes across the summer, is getting to players who really wanted to play for Leeds United and that's really hard because it surprised me how much players want to play in the Premier League versus the Championship.

Joe Rodon, after Christmas last year, or in the spring when we were doing our kit shoots, insisted on being in the kit shoots for the following season’s kit, which obviously is a disaster for the retail team because we hadn't signed him and all the imagery would have been dead, but Joe was desperate to be here. Before we had even any discussions with Tottenham Hotspur or his agent, he was, six months out, showing his desire to be at the club and that's really important.

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“A really strong replacement at the right side of centre-half, strong replacement at right-back. We accept we've lost a lot of potential in Archie [Gray], but, for this coming season, Jayden [Bogle] should be able to perform at or above Archie’s level quite comfortably.

“Two good solutions, creative solutions, at wing with one an emerging player with Largie [Ramazani] and one in Manor [Solomon], who's really proven at a Champions League level and has the ability to really dominate this league. And the one missing piece of the jigsaw, which Daniel was very fair to identify, was, ideally, to give the window an A+ grade, we'd have secured a number 10.

“Those number 10s are, as Daniel did point out in his interview, really hard to find. If you look at great number 10s in the Championship across the last few seasons, you've probably got Emi Buendia at Norwich [City] and Pablo Hernandez, but there's not many others. It's a very hard position to recruit.

“It's a very hard position where you get goals and assists and a physical presence and the players we looked at weren't available to us, or we didn't think were at the standard. My interpretation of Daniel’s statement, from a club perspective, is, as a club, we couldn't identify an attainable number 10 who was going to make us stronger than we are now.

“We have some very talented creative players. Willy can play at number 10 and I know Brenden is struggling from a fan perspective because of his decision to go on loan, but if we signed Brenden Aaronson this summer, even at half the price we actually signed him for in the Premier League, everybody would think that was a very, very credible replacement at number 10 at Championship level.”

On the subject of Buendia, Kinnear said the Argentine, a former colleague of Farke’s at Carrow Road, was someone the club enquired about this summer. While he was unavailable in the clearest terms possible from Villa Park, Gustavo Hamer was a player Leeds did bid for.

Kinnear said there had been some noises from South Yorkshire to suggest the playmaker may be available, but a bid was swiftly turned down by the Blades.

“I can talk specifically about two examples, two players we thought would fit the bill, would be significantly better than who we have currently, bear in mind we're looking at replacing a £40m player (Georginio Rutter), which is obviously going to be challenging at Championship level,” said Kinnear. “Buendia was on our list and, very clearly from Aston Villa, wasn't going to be released and the player didn't want to come back down to Championship level.

“He felt he served his time at Championship level and then Gustavo Hamer, who we've had an interest in before he went to Sheffield United, was another player who we felt would have significantly improved the team. Now, the way that transfer worked is we all assumed there was no chance Sheffield United would sell their star player to a promotion rival, based on the prize and the size of of what promotion’s worth.

“So if they sell to Leeds United and we go up by one point and they don't, they've cost themselves over £100m in TV revenue. However, we were given some light, and this is where the market works, through agents, through contacts, they might be open to an offer.

“Sheffield United are a difficult club to deal with at the moment because they're in an ownership transition. So there's no friendly face you can ring up and try and get a sense of whether the player’s for sale or not.

“So the only way to provoke the conversation was to make an offer and we made an offer, which we think was at a fair level and they came back very clearly and said he was not for sale in this window to anybody, and he certainly wouldn't be on sale to Leeds United and there was no price that could pull him away.

“Once you get that kind of feedback, and you believe in that kind of feedback, then you have to move on. Very simply, Gustavo Hamer wasn't available for Leeds United in this window.”

Like Buendia and Hamer, Kinnear also mentioned Manchester City’s James McAtee and Liverpool’s Fabio Carvalho as names they had in mind for filling the Rutter void. However, for different reasons, they too could not be acquired.

This left Elland Road’s recruitment team back at the drawing board and, Kinnear revealed, unable to find any available targets who were significantly better than Aaronson in that role behind a striker.

Brenden's attitude since he came back is first class, he's really hard working, he's really earnest, he's desperate to make it work, he's desperate to win the fans back over,” said Kinnear. “We had lots of conversations with the recruitment team, where we would analyse a player.

“There are hundreds of players, so the process is really, really robust. There is data on hundreds and hundreds of players, in every position. We've built a full scouting team since Victor [Orta]'s departure, rebuilt the scouting team up, so they're watching hours and hours of video footage to try and find the right players.

“They just couldn't find a player that was going to be significantly better than Brenden Aaronson. Brenden Aaronson is a United States international, he's a player we bought for over £20m, he's a player that could probably play in any of the top five leagues across Europe.

“We also watched him in pre-season and Daniel and the scouting staff and the coaching staff are excited about what he might deliver. If you look at his first three games, as he's working his way back into the team, he should have scored three goals and he scored two.

“There's lots to be excited about and then there's just a reality of what type of player who's going to come and prepared to be on the bench. This is one of the other challenges we have in the window.

“In lots of our key positions, if you're looking at loan players, loan players are not prepared to come because they want to be a guaranteed name on the teamsheet. When you look at wingers, and we're trying to find wingers who are prepared to come to Leeds United, they look at Willy Gnonto and Dan James and say ‘Well, I don't think I’m going to get a game there and I need game time.’

“Two of the other players, looking at the level we were looking at, McAtee at Man City, there was talk he might be released all the way through the window and then Pep decided to keep him. And then Carvalho, who, again, might have been able to go out on another loan.

“It might have been a Championship loan or a Premier League loan. We thought we were first in the queue if it was going to be in the Premier League and he ended up being sold for £27m to Brentford.

“To strengthen our team and to make it better, we have to shop at the highest level possible. And there is lots and lots of frustration.”