So Snoddy left

By Kim Bjerregaard

After weeks, months and even years of speculation, Robert Snodgrass called time on his Leeds spell exactly four years after Gary McAllister signed him from lowly Scottish side Livingston.

Snoddy was part of our promotion team from 2009/10 and became our best and most important player in our years in the Championship and even Stayed after we lost his buddies Beckford, Bradley Johnson, Gradel and Howson.

Norwich were sniffing about last summer and a £7-8M move seemed imminent, instead Leeds sold influential winger/forward Maxi Gradel for £2m and later local hero Morley boy Jonny Howson for about the same amount. I now wonder whether the smart thing would have been to sell Snoddy and use the £7m on extending Maxi and Jonny’s contracts? Both stated they wanted to stay, but for class players you pay a price in salary, something Ken Bates is yet to learn.

So instead we opted to wait until three weeks before our first game to lose our captain and best player, we all knew he'd leave I suspect, so why not get it over with in May and use the fee on some targets we originally had? E.g. Portsmouth player Joel Ward.

Now NW is forced to buy his "second choices" and while also being in the dark over our supposed takeover I understand if he’s getting a bit sick of things, to his credit he seems pretty confident of our chances however! But selling class players who could do a job for us in the Premier League and replacing them with 30+ year olds for that record breaking promotion is hardly the way to build for LUFC's future.

I do however understand Snoddy, I can’t see us becoming more the play- off contenders at best and he wants/ deserves football at the highest level - the loyalty seen by Revie’s team is not around anymore, especially not if you are in the second tier of English football and are gifted with a bit if talent.

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