news-engine

Leeds United have sanctioned a couple of departures this summer that most supporters will have supported. With just one year left on his deal, the decision was made to sell Pascal Struijk to Brighton. This was as opposed to losing the Dutch defender for free next summer. Jack Harrison was sold back to the MLS, whilst United mutually terminated Max Wober’s contract. The defender has since joined Schalke. But with another Leeds player seemingly on the verge of leaving, the 49ers urgently need to rethink their transfer strategy regarding the player. Sebastiaan Bornauw on the brink of completing loan move to Hamburg In recent days, it has become apparent that Hamburg are interested in bringing Sebastiaan Bornauw back to the Bundesliga. Just one season after he left Wolfsburg for £5.1million to join the Whites. Their sporting director recently confirmed their interest in the Belgian defender. Now, a move looks as though it will happen. According to a report via The Athletic, Hamburg are confident of completing a deal for Bornauw this week. Previous reports suggest the move for Bornauw will be a loan. If this is the case, I just cannot understand the logic behind the move. With the Premier League season rapidly approaching, we will be losing a player who has impressed in pre-season. Bornauw also proved last year that he is a very solid backup option. On top of this, it looks as if we won’t be receiving a fee for Bornauw. It doesn’t benefit us in any way, shape or form. If Bornauw struggles to impress or gets injured, we will likely have to sell him for less than what we could’ve got for him if we just sold him earlier this summer. It’s an unnecessary risk, and it just adds another transfer to the growing list of deals the 49ers must get done soon. Losing Sebastiaan Bornauw could have a negative knock-on effect Reports have emerged suggesting that Leeds want to sign another striker, attacker and left-back before the end of the window. When you consider that we need another backup ‘keeper and now a potential replacement for Bornauw, that is a lot of business that needs to be completed with our first Premier League game now less than two weeks away. This does not even consider any of our potential sales, with the likes of Largie Ramazani, Joe Gelhardt and Joel Piroe all expected to be sold at some stage. So if Bornauw does leave on loan and we can’t get a fee for him, I fear that having to sign a replacement for him could cut into our budget for any additions we were planning on making in the final third. We have already spent a combined £74million on Tarik Muharemovic and James Trafford this summer. So surely we don’t have that much left over to spend. That’s why having to sign a Bornauw replacement just seems like an extra unnecessary piece of business that we are forcing ourselves into doing. From Bornauw’s perspective, you can see why he’d want to leave. He only played a total of 439 Premier League minutes last season (Sofascore). But at the end of the day, he did sign a four-year deal with us just last summer. So unless we were selling him for a tidy profit, I’d be putting my foot down and keeping Bornauw around for one more year as backup.