Leeds United went into the final day of the summer window with five signings already banked and two glaring holes still to fill — and by 11pm they had filled both. Managing director Robbie Evans has now admitted that outcome was the least likely of the scenarios the club had prepared for, calling the Leeds United deadline day double swoop for Melvin Bard and Jean-Matteo Bahoya a “big win”.
Speaking in part two of his post-window sit-down with local media, published by the Yorkshire Evening Post, Evans took reporters inside a day that looked serene from the outside and felt anything but from within Elland Road.
What Robbie Evans said about Leeds United deadline day
Evans’ framing was striking. Leeds had, he explained, mapped out three outcomes for 1 September: no arrivals, one arrival, or two. The club would have been “pretty comfortable” with any of them. Landing both targets — the pair they had been tracking for some time — was the version they had rated “most unlikely”, and getting it over the line felt, in his words, like a “big win”.
That is an unusually candid admission from a football executive. Most clubs prefer to present deadline day as a plan executed rather than a set of branching probabilities. Evans instead described a day that was “a super intense day” internally, even as the outside world watched what looked like a methodical operation while chaos unfolded elsewhere in the Premier League.
He was equally blunt about whether supporters should expect a repeat. “I understand the thrill of deadline day from the outside as a sort of fan spectacle,” Evans said, “but I will say that internally I would like to avoid making deadline day part of our core operations, the same way you avoid January being part of our core operations. So please don’t get used to it!”
Why the left side was the last piece of the puzzle
To understand why Leeds were still working at 11pm, you have to go back through the window. Seven players arrived in total: Harry Wilson on a free from Fulham, Tarik Muharemovic from Sassuolo for £34m, James Trafford from Manchester City for £45m, Nico Elvedi from Borussia Monchengladbach for £8.5m, Ditmir Hodja from Rabotnicki, and then the deadline-day pair.
Five of those were done early. But two positions on the left of the pitch stayed stubbornly open. Gabriel Gudmundsson’s injury had left Daniel Farke without a natural left-back, and Leeds’ reported interest in the likes of Julian Brandt and Mykhailo Mudryk — neither of which came off, with the YEP reporting on 1 September that Mudryk’s move to Tottenham was a done deal — pointed clearly to a left-sided attacker being high on the shopping list.
Both boxes were ticked in the final hours. Bard arrived from OGC Nice on loan with an option to buy. Bahoya followed from Eintracht Frankfurt, his move confirmed after the 11pm cut-off. The YEP describes both as loan arrivals from Nice and Frankfurt respectively; Leeds have not published further terms on the Bahoya deal, so the length and structure of it remain unconfirmed.
The outs that shaped the window
The traffic in the opposite direction was heavy too, and it is the reason those two late deals mattered so much. Pascal Struijk joined Brighton for £15m, Illan Meslier’s contract expired and he moved on to Arsenal, Karl Darlow went to Manchester United on a free, Jack Harrison joined New England Revolution, Joe Gelhardt went to Hull City for £6.5m and Isaac Schmidt returned to Switzerland with Young Boys.
Then, on deadline day itself, Wilfried Gnonto’s move to Fiorentina was confirmed, while Largie Ramazani joined Burnley on a season-long loan that becomes permanent next summer for £6.5m rising to £8.5m. Maximilian Wober and Sam Byram were released; Joel Piroe and Sebastiaan Bornauw went out on loan. That is a substantial amount of attacking depth leaving a squad that had just survived its first season back in the Premier League.
Seen in that light, Evans’ relief is easier to read. Leeds did not simply add two names on 1 September. They replaced function — a left-back and a left-sided forward — in a window where they had shipped out a lot of both.
What the ‘big win’ has not yet delivered
Here is the caveat, and it is a significant one. Neither Bard nor Bahoya has made a Leeds United debut. Both were on the bench at Brighton on 5 September, and Farke has so far resisted throwing either into the side.
Part of that is simply timing. Bahoya’s paperwork landed after the deadline, and both players joined a squad already three games into a Premier League season. Farke has never been a manager who rushes new arrivals in for the sake of a headline, and Leeds’ start has hardly demanded emergency surgery: five points from three top-flight matches, with a 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest through Anton Stach’s free-kick and 1-1 draws against Brentford at Elland Road and away at Brighton, where Jayden Bogle opened the scoring.
But the Chelsea night changed the mood. Leeds led 2-0 at Stamford Bridge on 9 September through Muharemovic’s header and a Brenden Aaronson finish early in the second half, then conceded four in a 12-minute spell and six in the half overall, losing 6-3 and going out of the Carabao Cup at the third round. It ended a four-game unbeaten start in all competitions. Farke held a long squad meeting afterwards to work through what went wrong.
A heavily rotated side does not tell you everything about a squad, and Chelsea rotated too. But a defeat like that inevitably sharpens the question of what the new arrivals can add — and how quickly.
Evans, Farke and the bigger picture
Part one of the same Q&A dealt with the manager’s future and the club’s attacking investment, with Evans also describing Struijk’s decision to move to Brighton as “helpful” in shaping the window. You can read our coverage of Evans on Daniel Farke’s future and the summer’s attacking spend for the full context on that side of the conversation. Part two, per the YEP, also touched on the club’s pursuit of Shea Charles and on Jed York.
Taken together, the two instalments sketch a recruitment operation that wants to look nothing like the Leeds of a decade ago: targets tracked over months, contingencies mapped, and an explicit preference for doing business early rather than gambling on the final hours. Evans’ “please don’t get used to it” line is not a throwaway. It is a statement of intent about how the club intends to operate in January and beyond.
What it means before Newcastle
The next test arrives on Monday night, when Newcastle United visit Elland Road under the lights. Matthias Jaissle’s side sit on the same five points from nine as Leeds, and Farke has already warned his players about the Magpies’ threat in transition — the exact weakness Chelsea exposed so brutally. Farke has also spoken warmly about Eddie Howe’s legacy on Tyneside following the change of head coach. Our piece on the squad meeting Farke called after the Chelsea defeat covers how he has tried to reset the mood.
Whether Bard or Bahoya features is Farke’s call, not Evans’. But if the managing director’s “big win” is going to prove a good one, Monday under the lights would be a fine place to start showing it.
