Club icon Noel Whelan has slammed Caleb Ekuban in an interview with Football Insider, where he stated the 25-year-old was “not good enough to play for Leeds”, and, sadly, his words can also be applied to more than one Whites player.
Whelan was asked for his opinion on Ekuban, as it seems the 5 ft 9 forward will be heading to Turkey for good in the summer, with his agent recently dropping a major hint that Trabzonspor will trigger their option to buy.
It will see the Whites bank £1million, which is a lot less than some reports suggest Italian outfits may then offer the Super Lig side, but it is still double what we paid Chievo in 2017.
Given how disastrous Ekuban was during his ill-fated time with us, it is also a welcome amount to recoup ahead of a window where we will need to spend in order to strengthen, and Whelan is sure he will not be missed.
“He’s not good enough to play for Leeds, we saw that last season,” Whelan claimed. “He is surplus to requirements as we need a better quality of player.
“We don’t need him and I’m sure we will be pleased to get him off the wage bill.”
Ekuban’s pay is not the only wage we will be happy to shift in the summer, either, as we are still forking out for Izzy Brown to be here, despite his loan from Chelsea being nothing sort of a disaster.
Thankfully, we have not been paying Brown’s £25,000-a-week wage all season, but we have been ever since he was past fit to play, and yet he has only taken to the field in White on one occasion for the senior squad, which lasted all of nine minutes.
He was not even named among the substitutes when we played Wigan on Friday, which was the sixth successive match where Marcelo Bielsa has ignored his availability.
With only three games left to play, now, any chance of Brown proving to Bielsa that he has what it takes to make it at the club are long gone, as the boss values the work shown on the practice pitches as much as the real thing.
Clearly, the Argentine does not have any trust in the Peterborough-born flop, and he should have his bags packed ready to head back to London in the summer.