After failing to sign a great forward, Leeds CEO describes Sheffield United as a “difficult club to deal with.”
Leeds United had their sights set on Sheffield United standout Gustavo Hamer. However, a deal never occurred and the Whites’ CEO Angus Kinnear revealed what transpired behind the scenes.
After all the transfers this summer, it looked like 49ers Enterprise was aiming for a big-name signing. One of the names linked this past summer to a potential move to Elland Road was Hamer.
Hamer has been with Sheffield United since 2023 and has appeared in 44 matches across all competitions for the Blades. During his time with the English side, the player has scored seven goals and recorded eight assists.
Leeds’ club chief mentioned that they put forward a “fair” offer for the Dutch star despite believing the Blades would be reluctant to sell to a promotion rival and potentially miss out on £100 million in Premier League revenue.
He added that although they heard through contacts that a transfer might be possible, they couldn’t reach anyone directly at Bramall Lane because of the club’s ownership situation. As a result, their bid was firmly turned down.
“The way that transfer worked is we all assumed there was no chance that Sheffield United would sell their star player to a promotion rival based on the prize, the size of what promotion’s worth,” Kinnear said on The Square Ball. “If they sell him to Leeds United and we go up by one point and they don’t they’ve cost themselves over £100 million in TV revenue.
“However, we were given some light, and this is how the market works through agents and contacts, they might be open to an offer. Sheffield United are a difficult club to deal with at the moment because they’re in an ownership transition so there’s no friendly face who you can ring up and get a sense of whether a player’s for sale or not.
“The only way to provoke the conversation was to make an offer, and we made an offer which we think was at a fair level, and they came back very clearly and said he was not for sale in this window to anybody, and he certainly wasn’t on sale to Leeds United, and there was no price that could pull him away.”
