Leeds United were forced to sell a number of their top players from last season in the summer after losing the Championship playoff final. However, there were some players who they could have kept but decided to move on to bring in more cash and to bring in fresh players.
Daniel Farke had to take some tough calls at the end of the season to ensure that he had the funds to rebuild the Leeds squad for another push for promotion this year.
Leeds are third in the table and it seems the manager’s decision to streamline the squad further and make space for new signings could pay off at the end of the season through promotion to the Premier League.
One of the victims of Leeds’ culling last summer was Charlie Cresswell who was sold to French club Toulouse for a deal worth €4m in the last transfer window.
The defender was once touted to be a future England captain but he was not rated highly by the Leeds manager and he was eventually moved.
Cresswell’s agent reveals how the defender moved on from Leeds
The centre-back had a year left on his contract and Leeds chose to move him on rather than offer him a new deal.
Hayden Evans, the player’s agent, believes Cresswell would have had a part to play for Leeds this season had he stayed at Elland Road.
However, he conceded that it was clear that the defender was not rated highly by the coaching staff and when he informed them about interest in him, Leeds were more than happy to sell him.
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Evans admitted that it was a bit surprising to see how keen Leeds were to sell Cresswell last summer.
“Cressie is the weird one. In most people’s opinions, you know, he’s that sort of centre-back that should be on the bench right now possibly, you know, that they would have been a part to play”, he said on The Square Ball podcast.
“But then you’ve got a situation of, well, he’s clearly not fancied because other people were getting in front of him, getting minutes off the bench in front of him. So the writing was totally on the wall.
“So when we tested the club by saying, we might have some interest and the club go fine, this is how much we want, it’s done. There’s no going back from that.”
Since he was an academy product, Cresswell’s departure was pure profit for Leeds and served them well in their FFP calculations.
