Leeds United CEO Angus Kinnear has revealed that the club’s data and scouting told them that one of their summer signings is approaching an inflection point in their career.
The Whites suffered a number of painful player exits over the summer with the impact of failing to win promotion felt as Archie Gray, Glen Kamara, Crysencio Summerville and Georginio Rutter left Elland Road.
Leeds were under pressure to sign replacements and Kinnear insists that there was a limit to how much risk the club were prepared to take in a departure from previous years.
He feels a good example is the club’s pursuit of winger Largie Ramazani, who arrived from Spanish side Almeria.
Leeds feel, Kinnear revealed, that Ramazani is now at an inflection point in his career which should see him step up on the number of goals he is able to score across the course of a season.
“That’s [the need for an immediate impact] why so much time was spent on someone like Largie Ramazani to make sure we were buying him at the right point of the curve”, Kinnear told the Square Ball.
“All the data and all the scouting reports suggest this is a player who has scored five or six goals a season, historically, but has the ability to score 15 because they are at that inflection point in their career.
“But that is as much risk as we were prepared to take rather than going for younger players or even more obscure players, who might be good, but might not be”, the CEO added.
Ramazani did hit nine goals in one season when Almeria were in the Spanish second tier in the 2021/22 campaign, but in the previous two seasons grabbed just three and four goals respectively.
By contrast, Summerville found the back of the net 21 times for Leeds last term.
