Rumours have circulated that Leeds United have bid €15m (£13.74m) for SPAL forward Andrea Petagna.
They have every right to be excited about his potential arrival. He’s a striker who netted 16 goals in Serie A last season, outscoring the likes of Mauro Icardi and Andrea Belotti.
The problem is that it’s hard to see these reports being true. Leeds’ current financial situation, coupled up with a source that has a history of unreliability may mean that this transfer story is dead before it even got started.
The original reports come from Italian site TuttoMercatoWeb. Unfortunately for Leeds fans, the news outlet aren’t the most reliable – just this summer they have run incredible stories surrounding the Yorkshire club, linking Gianluigi Buffon and Francesco Totti with moves to Elland Road.
Perhaps it is a little unfair to completely write off this rumour due to TMW’s history as they have previously gotten things right, but analysing Leeds’ current financial situation makes the move seem more and more unlikely.
It’s no secret that the Yorkshire club are treading the line carefully when it comes to financial fair play.
Executive Director Paul Bell wasn’t coy about the fact they had to sell Pontus Jansson due to FFP as he stated,
“There’s a reasonable answer to all of this. You look at the Championship now and Financial Fair Play, or Profitability and Sustainability as it’s now called, has been talked about, talked about, talked about,”
Jansson himself confirmed that he was sold in order to comply with FFP, and The Sun’s Tom Barclay also stated that Kemar Roofe could be sold for the same reasons.
We’ve known that Andrea Radrizzani has been operating at a loss as the club lost £4.3m during his first year in charge despite selling Chris Wood for £15m.
It seems that the sale of Wood kept the Whites safe from FFP sanctions. Championship clubs are allowed to lose £39m over a three-year period. Without player sales, they would have been operating at a loss of around £20m that year, which of course limits their ability to spend big.
Indeed, Leeds have sold Jack Clarke and Pontus Jansson this summer for a combined fee of £15.5m, but they’re already committed to spending £15m on Helder Costa next summer.
With the current financial state at Leeds United combined with the unreliability of the original source, it is hard to believe that the Yorkshire club are looking to splash out on a striker at this moment in time.