So it looks as if it’s all confirmed.
Speaking to Sky Sports yesterday, Marcelo Bielsa confirmed that Kemar Roofe will be departing before the end of the window. He’ll most likely move to Anderlecht unless someone like Rangers decide to come back in and swoop for him at the last minute.
So now attention turns to who, if any, the club will be bringing in to replace him. Roofe was Leeds’ top scorer last season and although Patrick Bamford got off to the perfect start yesterday by scoring the second in a 3-1 win over Bristol City, he can’t be expected to carry the load all year, particularly with his injury record in the past 12 months.
Well the good news is that finding a ready-made, proven Championship scorer became a whole lot easier over the weekend. According to LancsLive, Burnley striker Matej Vydra has submitted a transfer request in an attempt to get more first-team football.
Leeds were linked with Vydra last summer, and according to reports from Alan Nixon, Burnley were interested in bringing in Leeds’ defensive midfielder Kalvin Phillips and offering up the striker as part of the deal. Whilst swapping Phillips for Vydra might not make the greatest sense, I do think that there is an avenue to be explored with Leeds making a straight bid for Vydra using the money that comes in for Roofe, reported to be around £7m.
65 goals and 22 assists in 185 appearances in the division make Vydra the perfect man to replace Roofe in the line-up. He seems to be in that weird position of being too good for the second tier but not good enough for the Premier League, sort of like a Czech David Nugent, so when/if Leeds get promoted next summer, might be best to offload him. If Leeds are serious in challenging for promotion, then there’s probably no safer bet for goals in this division than the 27-year-old.
However, as I’ve said in the past this is something that needs to be done as soon as possible. We don’t want to get to transfer deadline day, have Burnley start pushing the price up further and further, and end up being priced out and missing out on him altogether. The second the funds come in for Roofe, they should be straight on the phone to Burnley and getting the process underway.