‘We couldn’t afford’: Angus Kinnear says Leeds simply couldn’t afford ‘excellent’ Aston Villa man

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Managerial hits and misses were the story of the Premier League last season.

Southampton, Leicester and Leeds were all relegated after getting it wrong in the dugout, while the likes of Wolves, Crystal Palace and, most notably, Aston Villa pulled clear of a relegation battle after changing their managers.

Unai Emery’s arrival at Villa Park has changed absolutely everything about that club, and, as you can imagine, other teams are looking on with envy.

Speaking on The Square Ball Podcast, Leeds United CEO, Angus Kinnear, has been discussing Emery’s arrival at Villa and why Leeds got it wrong, and he stated that Emery was a manager that Leeds simply couldn’t afford to bring in.

Leeds couldn’t afford Emery

Kinnear spoke about the Spaniard.

“It absolutely happens. If you look at when you make a managerial change in a relegation scenario, it’s a toss of a coin if it works or not. In 50% of cases the manager changes things in the way Unai Emery did, Unai Emery is a manager we couldn’t afford or secure, but he proved to be an excellent choice,” Kinnear said.

Why not?

We hate to do this, but we can’t help but call Kinnear out for this one.

He says that Leeds couldn’t afford to hire Unai Emery, and yet, two months after Emery was brought to Aston Villa, Leeds were paying £35m for Georginio Rutter?

Emery is on very good money at Villa, make no mistake about that – reportedly around £6m-a-year, but that’s not out of Leeds’ reach, surely?

Marcelo Bielsa was said to be on £8m-a-year at Leeds, while it was widely reported that Sam Allardyce was offered £2.5m to keep Leeds up for just four games worth of work.

Emery may have been unattainable for Leeds, but we’re not buying the idea that he was just too expensive for the club.