da cassino： Attacks win you games, defences win you titles.
da brdice： The old adage has rung true for Leeds United as they romped home to the Championship title while boasting the best defensive record in the division, and their strength at the back is certainly something they’ll want to see more of next season.
However, there’s every chance that their backline will line up significantly weaker next term, and it may actually end up being worse than when Marcelo Bielsa arrived.
There’s no doubting that Leeds’ defensive brilliance this season was largely down to Ben White’s talent.
The Brighton loanee won the club’s Young Player of the Year award, and he’s also reportedly been valued at £40m.
The Seagulls seemingly have no interest in selling him this summer, and United may struggle to replace him, considering it’s been claimed that he’s already better than £47.5m man John stones.
The ironic thing is, the Yorkshire club’s position wouldn’t have been as bad if they hadn’t have made one decision 12 months ago.
Of course, we’re talking about selling Pontus Jansson.
The Whites may have had the best defensive record in the division, but they only narrowly edged out Brentford, and their backline was marshalled by a former Leeds man in the shape of Jansson.
The Whites were able to live comfortably without Jansson due to the emergence of White, but now that he’s gone, they’re going to be scrambling for a replacement, when they could have had an experienced Championship Team of the Year level centre-half ready to step in and replace him.
Of course, there’s more to it than meets the eye, Jansson reckons he was sold because of FFP while others claim he fell out with Bielsa, but either way, it has to be said that Leeds would have been better off keeping him or at least holding out for more than the £5.5m they received, especially as we’d seen Championship centre-backs who hadn’t made the Team of the Season moving for eight-figure sums last summer.