Here are your Leeds United morning headlines for Tuesday, July 14.
Leeds announcement ‘massive’ - Phillips
Kevin Phillips said it is “massive” Leeds United’s youth academy has been upgraded to Category One status.
The decorated former striker was speaking following the upgrade of the academy after an audit’s assessment on investment, facilities, resources, staffing and productivity at youth level.
The news means Leeds are now at the highest category of academy football and will help them maintain their best young talent.
“It is big news,” Phillips told Football Insider.
“It shows that Leeds are moving back in the right direction. They were challenging in semi-finals in the Champions League, they dropped down to the Championship but hopefully now they will be back in the Premier League and the academy can start moving forward.
“It is important for them to bring players through given the situation at the moment where teams do not have tons and tons of money to splash out. It is massive for them.”
Leeds want German midfielder - report
Leeds are one of three clubs reportedly in the race to sign free agent Patrick Erras this summer following his exit from Nurnberg.
Bild (via Inside Futbol) claim there is interest from Elland Road in the 25-year-old, alongside Queen’s Park Rangers and Werder Bremen.
The German midfielder helped Nurnberg stave off relegation to the third tier in Germany after helping his side to a promotion/relegation play-off victory over Ingolstadt, with the club said to still be hopeful of persuading the player to stay.
Watkins fires warning to Leeds
Ollie Watkins believes Leeds and West Bromwich Albion should be worried about Brentford’s form going into the final few games of the campaign.
The west London side have won seven Championship matches in a row and are six points from league leaders Leeds and three from second-placed West Brom, keeping the promotion race alive.
“Yeah I’m sure any team would,” Watkins replied when asked if the top two should be worried about Brentford’s form.
“When other teams are winning and you’ve dropped points, you would… players do take notice but we’ve just got to concentrate on ourselves and just win as many games as possible and carry on.
“I feel like these last two games we’ve had more to give.
“The Derby game – we won that comfortably in the end [3-1] and still I feel like we could have played better. So it’s nice, we’ve won these last two games and we can still do more.
“It’s all down to ourselves really.”
