Following Leeds’ relegation from the Premier League at the end of last season a number of players were keen on heading for the Elland Road exit door.
Players triggered escape clauses in their contracts and there were a host of loan departures with Ramus Kristensen, Diego Llorente, Max Wober, Brenden Aaronson, Robin Koch, Jack Harrison and Luis Sinisterra among those going.
Leeds did have sales with Tyler Adams moving to Bournemouth and Rodrigo heading to the Middle East, but Kinnear insists that there were a lot more proposals on the table, even for the loan exits.
“We could have had a very similar picture [to Leicester City] at Leeds United”, the CEO said on the Square Ball.
“We accepted the offer for Tyler [Adams]. We could have accepted an offer well in advance of that for Willy [Gnonto], significantly in advance of that.
“We could have taken an offer for Illan [Meslier] which would have been in the mid twenties.
“An offer for [Luis] Sinisterra which would have been at twenty, for Pascal Struijk which would have been low teens.
“If we had been in a position where we’d have needed to cash in we could have done.
“Equally we could have taken offers on some of the players who left on loan, but we didn’t take those offers because we wanted to not crystalise the P&S loss for them being sold below their book value, so have instead taken the salary saving.
“The salary saving we made across this season because of the loans and the outs is £40m and that has been directly invested into the salaries and signings of the new players.”
Leeds brought in goalkeeper Karl Darlow from Newcastle United and the expectation was that Meslier would depart, but the Whites have kept hold of him and rejected an offer which could have seen him go.
