It was being reported yesterday across the media that head coach Darren Moore was interested in two Leeds United players. Swedish international centre-half Pontus Jansson and former Academy graduate Kemar Roofe.
Centre-half Jansson has been at this summer’s World Cup out in Russia and he made a couple of appearances as the country from which Jonas Olsson came took an early exit. The 27-year-old arrived at Leeds from Torino, he made 36 appearances (returning 3 goals) in his initial season-long loan spell with them and they signed him permanently that summer for a reported £3.5million in 2017. Since then he’s added an additional 43 appearances to his name with a further 3 goals.
He is a fan favourite at the club and you don’t need to search far on social media to discover what they think of the report from Expressen – I wouldn’t bother Google Translating it. Even to me it reads they’ve remembered Jonas Olsson and just put two and two together.
The Yorkshire Evening Post had us in for now 25-year-old Roofe who followers of the youth setup will know, but having left us in the summer of 2015 he hadn’t made a senior appearance for us.
He’s done well since finding his feet though and last season he was their top goalscorer with a return of 14 goals in 39 appearances across all competitions. Since he left permanently and signed for Oxford United, his 2015/16 campaign with them saw 26 goals in 49 games – but he can boost his Oxford record with a half-season loan spell the previous year where he made 16 appearances and scored 6 goals.
Having then moved to Leeds for a reported £3million in the summer of 2016 – if he does depart this summer – he leaves them with 88 appearances (63 starts) and a return of 17 goals.
He’d certainly be an interesting one to see return if this comes to anything as many wondered why we let him go in the first place. Suffice to say a number of fans would think he’d already be an improvement on Nacer Chadli is my guess.
