£20m player could ask to leave on loan in January after Leeds tried to sign him in the summer

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Leeds United already look as though they will have to enter the January transfer market for reinforcements.

Just over a month after the closure of the summer window, Daniel Farke‘s squad is already looking extremely threadbare as injuries continue to mount up.

Leeds were without Ethan Ampadu, Manor Solomon, Dan James, Max Wober and Isaac Schmidt for Tuesday night’s 1-1 draw at Norwich City.

Farke then also lost Ilia Gruev to injury inside the opening 20 minutes at Carrow Road, with Leeds‘ midfield options now looking extremely thin on the ground.

And the lack of depth without those options in the squad were extremely telling with how poor Leeds looked against Norwich after Farke’s use of his bench.

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Leeds handed potential James McAtee hope

The two substitutes that really killed Leeds last night were Joel Piroe and Patrick Bamford, who replaced Largie Ramazani and Mateo Joseph respectively.

With Wilfried Gnonto also going off just a matter of minutes later, Leeds lost all their pace and creativity in the final third and so were then forced to withstand pressure to come away with a point.

Of course, once Solomon and James return from injury, Leeds are going to be much stronger, but perhaps another central creative attacking player wouldn’t go amiss.

According to Angus Kinnear, Leeds were keen on signing Manchester City’s James McAtee but were told he was not available. The former Sheffield United loanee remained at the Etihad.

However, as per Give Me Sport, that could change in January, with McAtee prepared to hold talks with Pep Guardiola due to his lack of game time.

The £20m rated McAtee has started just once in all competitions this season but did manage to get on the scoresheet in City’s 4-0 win at Slovan Bratislava on Tuesday.

The 21-year-old, though, is keen to build on the momentum he has built during his two loan spells at Bramall Lane, which could see him leave City temporarily again.

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What Pep Guardiola said about McAtee after Leeds interest

Speaking after McAtee’s goal in the Carabao Cup win over Watford, Pep Guardiola gave a pretty specific reason behind why he wanted to keep him.

The City boss claimed his ability in ‘small spaces’ is a unique profile in his squad and so specifically told the board he did not want to let him go.

He said: “It is difficult to find players with a sense of goal in small spaces who attack the final third and McAtee has that quality. That’s why I said to Txiki [Begiristain] I don’t want to loan him and I don’t want to sell him.

“I need his specific quality in small spaces. James has this ability. I have to see them and the first games I didn’t like it much and I told him afterwards: ‘Your impact in the game is not big, I want more.’

“After, he did well and his impact was really good. His period at Sheffield United helped him a lot to give value and suffer to get points, physicality, win duels, this kind of stuff. It helped him a lot playing there.”