Leeds United handed new transfer warning despite Red Bull investment

Leeds United must sell some of their key stars this summer, insists one football finance expert.

After failing to secure promotion back to the Premier League, Daniel Farke's men will spend a second consecutive season in the second tier after narrowly missing out in the Championship play-off final against Southampton.

In what has been a bitter pill to take, the Whites' end-of-season woes mean they now must focus on balancing the books and despite recent investment from energy drink tycoon Red Bull, talented stars such as Willy Gnonto, Archie Gray and Crysencio Summerville could all be forced to depart Elland Road.

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"Leeds United have been doing okay on a financial basis in terms of financial performance, but they have a significant liability of over £100m in terms of transfer fees," began sport finance expert Professor Rob Wilson speaking to OLBG.

"The reality of Championship level revenue is that they are gonna be 50% lower next year than they probably were in their first year after relegation because of the reduced parachute payment and reduced TV payments.

"So as an entity, they are shrinking and will need to meet those obligations. The only way they can logistically do that is by selling a couple of players and trying to generate some fairly high fees for them that can be used to offset that debt.

"It was interesting to see the Red Bull association come out last week because that might help with a little bit of capital injection, but this is not going to change the balance sheet."