Jean-Kevin Augustin is Leeds United’s most expensive ever transfer mistake.
Augustin arrived at Elland Road in January 2020 from Red Bull Leipzig on a loan deal until the end of the season, but would go onto play just 48 minutes of football.
Included in the agreement with the Bundesliga side was an obligation-to-buy Augustin in the event of promotion to the Premier League, which Leeds, of course, went onto achieve.
However, that was also the season where football was put on hold for four months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, though Augustin was still out injured for the entirety of Leeds’ run-in.
After such minimal impact and Leeds not being able to seal their promotion until July, the Whites attempted to argue their obligation had expired as a way of getting out of the deal.
Augustin would never go onto play for Leeds ever again, but after several months of legal battles, they were ordered to pay Leipzig £18 million for the fee that was agreed, and a further £24.5 million to Augustin for the money he lost in wages.
As such, he effectively cost Leeds just under £1 million for every minute he spent on the pitch for the club.
Douglas’s brutal Augustin assessment after one Leeds session
Augustin was brought in as a highly rated young player who had come through the ranks at PSG and shown glimpses of what he can do at Leipzig.
After Arsenal recalled Eddie Nketiah due to being unable to dislodge Patrick Bamford as Leeds’ first choice number nine, Augustin was the man Victor Orta opted to bring in as his replacement.
And while there was a lot of hype from the outside about his arrival, inside Thorp Arch the feeling wasn’t the same.
Barry Douglas was one of the players at Leeds at the time of Augustin’s arrival and on the latest episode of the ‘Under The Cosh Podcast’, has shared a brutal story about his first training session.
Douglas says he knew right away that Augustin wouldn’t ever make it under Bielsa, and even phoned his agent to ask who he was.
He said: “We were doing some drills with him, crossing and finishing, one of these individual drills. After that training, I called my agent and said ‘who’s this boy Augustin?’. He said he came highly regarded.
“I said ‘I’m telling you right now, he won’t play for Marcelo, no chance’. I just saw how he moved, how he was. He wasn’t a Bielsa player.”
“He obviously wasn’t in his best condition, let’s put it that way. I knew how the training was. I’m thinking ‘you’re in for trouble here’. He was basically cast aside.”
Jean-Kevin Augustin stats for Leeds
| Stat | Augustin |
| Appearances | 3 |
| Minutes | 48 |
| Goals | 0 |
| Assists | 0 |
| Cost-per-minute | £0.9m |
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