Willy Gnonto has spoken publicly for the first time since his Leeds United exit, with the Yorkshire Evening Post reporting the Italian’s first comments since a deadline-day switch to Fiorentina — a move the paper describes as a loan — built around a “want to show” admission about the next stage of his career.
It closes the book, for this season at least, on one of the more emotive Leeds departures of the summer. Gnonto wore the number 29 shirt at Elland Road, arrived as a teenager and leaves as a player whose Leeds story never quite resolved itself either way. Here is what he has said, what the deal actually is, and why a club that spent heavily on the flanks was willing to let him go.
What Gnonto has said since his Leeds United exit
The detail carried by the YEP is that Gnonto has framed his move around wanting to show what he can do — the “want to show” line the paper leads on. Leeds have not published a farewell interview with the winger themselves, and it is worth being precise here rather than putting words in his mouth: the comments are his first since the transfer went through, and they are reported rather than issued through the club.
That framing will not surprise anyone who watched his final months at Elland Road. Gnonto was a squad player in a Premier League side rather than a fixture in it, and the summer arrived with the sense that both parties needed a decision one way or the other.
The deal: a deadline-day departure to Serie A
Gnonto’s exit was confirmed on 1 September, in the closing hours before the window shut at 11pm on Tuesday. We covered the Gnonto’s Fiorentina exit as it was confirmed, and the YEP’s reporting since has characterised the arrangement as a loan.
What has not been verified is the structure beyond that. There is no confirmed fee, no confirmed option or obligation to buy and no confirmed length of any future commitment, so treat any figure you see attached to this deal as speculation until Leeds or Fiorentina say otherwise. What is certain is that Gnonto should not be counted among Daniel Farke’s available players for the trip to Brighton on Saturday.
One consequence is worth spelling out, because it is the reason a deadline-day exit is never quite as simple as it looks. The window closed at 11pm on Tuesday, which means Leeds cannot replace Gnonto now even if an injury elsewhere makes them wish they had kept him. Every wide-forward decision between now and January has to be made from the players already on the books. Farke and the recruitment staff clearly ran that arithmetic and were comfortable with the answer — Bahoya’s arrival on the same night is the clearest evidence of it, given the deal was completed after the deadline had technically passed.
Why Leeds United were willing to let a fan favourite go
The answer sits in the rest of the window. Leeds made seven signings across the summer, and the YEP puts the outlay at around £86m — a rebuild rather than a top-up, and one weighted towards exactly the areas of the pitch Gnonto occupied.
Harry Wilson came in from Fulham on a free. Ditmir Hodja arrived from Rabotnicki in late August. Then deadline day delivered two more: Melvin Bard on loan from Nice with an option to buy, and Jean-Matteo Bahoya from Eintracht Frankfurt, confirmed after the 11pm deadline had passed as the seventh and final piece of business. Add James Trafford, Tarik Muharemović and Nico Elvedi and you have a squad reshaped from front to back.
Gnonto was not the only wide player to go, either. Largie Ramazani joined Burnley on a season-long loan that becomes permanent next summer, in a deal reported at £6.5m rising to £8.5m. Two wingers out, two wide options in. That is not a club losing control of its squad on deadline day; it is a club making a choice.
The winger depth that made the decision possible
Look at what Farke is working with now. Daniel James remains the senior option on the right and one of the few players in the squad who has been through every division Leeds have occupied in the past five years. Noah Okafor is the other established wide forward — a player Leeds thought enough of to turn down a reported deadline-day enquiry from Sunderland.
Brenden Aaronson can play off either flank or through the middle. Harry Wilson gives Farke a left-footed creator on the right. Bahoya arrives as a direct, high-speed wide man, and Hodja is a longer-term project. Our post-window best XI shows just how crowded that part of the pitch has become.
Seen that way, Gnonto’s route to regular Premier League minutes had narrowed to almost nothing. A loan to a Serie A club that intends to play him is a more useful season for everyone than a year of substitute appearances and cup starts.
What the move offers Gnonto
He is an Italy international returning to Italian football, and that context matters. Gnonto left Italy as a teenager to develop abroad and comes back to Serie A as a player with Premier League and Championship football behind him, joining one of the country’s more established sides.
Fiorentina will give him something Leeds could not promise: a defined role. If the “want to show” sentiment reported by the YEP means anything, it is that he understood the trade-off he was making. A player who felt he had more to offer than the minutes he was getting has gone somewhere he can prove it, in a league that will suit his directness.
What the Gnonto Leeds United exit means for supporters
Complicated, probably. Gnonto’s Leeds career spanned relegation, two Championship seasons and promotion, and he produced enough moments in that time to be genuinely popular on the Kop. He was also the subject of a long-running summer of speculation more than once, and a player whose best form was never sustained for a full campaign in the top flight.
What softens it is the shape of the window around him. Leeds have not sold a first-choice player and reinvested badly. They have moved on squad players and replaced them with more of what Farke wants, which is why the mood among supporters has been so positive — the YEP’s fan jury handed the window an “A+”, and our own verdict on Leeds’ seven signings reached a similar conclusion.
Where it leaves Leeds before Brighton
In a decent place. Leeds sit on four points from two Premier League games and are unbeaten in three across all competitions: Anton Stach’s free-kick won the opener at Nottingham Forest on 22 August, a 2-0 EFL Cup win followed at the City Ground three days later, and Dominic Calvert-Lewin equalised from a Lukas Nmecha cross to rescue a 1-1 draw with Brentford at Elland Road on 30 August.
Saturday brings Brighton away, where Pascal Struijk now plays after his £15m move, with a Carabao Cup third-round tie against Chelsea to follow. The one live concern is Joe Rodon, withdrawn against Brentford with a reported hamstring problem and without a confirmed club timescale.
Gnonto, meanwhile, starts again in Serie A. His Leeds exit was one of seven pieces of movement in a window that reshaped the squad, and the most honest reading of it is the one his own reported words point to: a player who wanted to show what he can do, at a club that could not guarantee him the chance. Fiorentina’s season, and Leeds’, will tell us whether both sides got it right.
