Pablo Hernandez deserves his new deal, but the length of it is simply baffling – Opinion

So Pablo Hernandez signed a new contract the other day.

Now that I’ve had some time to digest the news, to really sit back and think about it, I still find myself confused by it. It’s not the fact that he got a new deal that concerns me, quite frankly if you look at his numbers to start off the season before he got injured, and his Leeds record overall, you can argue that he’s the Leeds player that deserves a new contract the most.

It’s the length of the deal though that I have a problem with.

The fact that we’ve signed him on for two years, keeping him here until the summer of 2022, shows that we intend to keep using him as one of the club’s key players going forward, and that doesn’t sit right with me.

If we are putting so much of our faith, and basically the club’s future in the hands of a 34-year-old, what does that say about that talent that we’ve got coming through the ranks? If this was a one-year deal, basically to then see him act as a ‘mentor’ for anyone coming through the ranks like Liam McCarron, then I’d understand the logic and I’d say no more about it.

Or if we were doing it simply so the club can sell him in the summer and be able to get a fee for him rather than letting him leave for nothing, I’d have understood that too. Indeed Phil Hay said hinted in September that it is more or less Hernandez’s destiny to eventually go back to play for Castellon in Spain, so everything was lined up for him to get one final swan song and depart in the summer, because at age 34, his career doesn’t have many years left. What this contract is essentially doing, is giving him another year in the starting lineup, and another year in which he’ll be holding back someone younger who can be developed by getting plenty of minutes under his belt.

With the other new contracts being handed around to the elder members of squad like Stuart Dallas, Liam Cooper, Mateusz Klich, I fear that too much focus is being placed on the immediate future, this season and next (whatever division the club may be in), rather than looking more long term towards the next five to ten years.

Hopefully a few of those deals, like the one for Kalvin Philips, will be on its way. Otherwise we could end up putting too much importance on the present.