‘Not being unkind’: Sam Allardyce pins Leeds relegation on one major failure

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Sam Allardyce believes Leeds United were relegated from the Premier League due to their failure to replace key players last summer.

Allardyce was speaking on the Tippy Tappy Football Podcast, where he claimed those who were signed to fill the void left by Kalvin Phillips and Raphinha weren’t good enough.

After staying up narrowly on the final day in 2022, Leeds granted both Phillips and Raphinha their big moves to Manchester City and Barcelona respectively.

In replacing them, though, Leeds actually had a net spend of around minus £8 million last summer (transfermarkt), which is clear evidence to suggest they did not do enough to build a squad capable of coping without the aforementioned key duo.

Marc Roca and Tyler Adams were both brought into strengthen midfield, while Luis Sinisterra and Brenden Aaronson were signed to bolster the attacking options.

Allardyce criticises Leeds recruitment

Leeds’ recruitment has become a huge topic of conversation in recent years and ultimately, there have been too many failures.

As a result Victor Orta – the man tasked with bringing in players – was relieved of his duties at the beginning of last month.

Allardyce believes the reason Leeds have bucked the recent trend of teams finding it much easier to survive in their third season back in the Premier League is down to poor signings.

“It’s unusual to go down in the third year. The stats are year one is the most difficult, to stay, everyone goes on about second season syndrome.

“Season one is the hardest, season two is less – increases by another 10% the chance of staying up. When you get to year three it jumps another 25-30% normally but that shows you have to keep your best players if you can and Leeds haven’t managed to do that.

“When they’ve sold them, their replacements unfortunately – and I’m not being unkind here – have not been as good as the players that left.”

He is spot on here. Orta took one too many punts on replacing such key players last summer and it has backfired horrendously, with Leeds now back in the Championship.

It is all well and good signing players you feel can generate a profit in the future, but if they aren’t good enough to make an instant impact, it is a strategy that will never work.