Leeds United midfielder Ilia Gruev is set for an extended spell on the sidelines after sustaining a significant injury to his right knee.
The 24-year-old sustained the injury during his side’s 1-1 draw with Norwich City on Tuesday.
Leeds confirmed that the procedure will require an “extended period of rehabilitation.”
Gruev’s injury leaves Leeds somewhat light in the central midfield after club captain Ethan Ampadu was ruled out for ten weeks with a left knee ligament injury.
Manager Daniel Farke confirmed on Monday that the midfielder had sustained a “serious” injury to his lateral knee ligament but would not require surgery.
Gruev is a key member of Leeds’ first-team squad, starting all eight of the side’s Championship fixtures this season prior to his injury.
After sustaining the injury at Carrow Road on Tuesday, he was replaced by 29-year-old midfielder Joe Rothwell, who joined the club on loan from Bournemouth during the summer transfer window.
Leeds, who are fifth in the Championship, are next in action against league leaders Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on Friday.
Injury Crisis Looms Over Leeds
Daniel Farke’s Leeds United team are dropping like flies. First it was Dan James, then our new (chronically injured) winger Manor Solomon’s back injury turned into a hamstring problem. Ethan Ampadu is out for ten weeks and Ilia Gruev hobbled off on Tuesday night, with Leeds since confirming Gruev has suffered a ‘significant’ injury to his meniscus and ‘will require an extended period of rehabilitation’. Great. Max Wöber is injured too, if anyone’s interested.
Farke has been asked if he might turn to the free agent market to pick up a temporary solution or two, just to get us through to January so that Angus Kinnear can bump our B+ transfer business up to an A grade. Unsurprisingly, Farke isn’t keen on the idea because it’s costly and the type of player available for nothing in early October probably isn’t one that will make much impact.
It hasn’t stopped people suggesting potential signings online, nor has it stopped certain media outlets who might have started a list of free agent defenders with Sergio Ramos and ended it with Paul Dummett. Now we know that we’re definitely not signing Joel Matip, here’s a few free agents we definitely shouldn’t sign
Free Agents Leeds Should Avoid
VURNON ANITA
Arriving at Leeds in 2017 with an impressive CV — 100+ games at both Ajax and Newcastle — Anita was a midfielder who could ‘play’ at both left and right full-back. What Leeds got was a left-back so bad that we bought Laurens De Bock to replace him. After Patrick Bamford scored a hat-trick for Middlesbrough while being marked by Anita, Moxco’s match report described our left-back conundrum perfectly:
Choosing between Anita and De Bock [is] like deciding which feather duster we’re going to take into a knife fight.
Anita wore the no.8 jersey at Leeds and while we didn’t expect Johnny Giles, I’ve always felt a bitterness towards him for being the only Ajax midfielder of the past two decades who couldn’t play football.
He left Leeds for Willem II on loan in 2018 and then played for CSKA Sofia and RKC Waalwijk before joining Al-Orobah of Saudi Arabia’s second tier in July 2023. He achieved promotion at Al-Orobah, playing 33 times before being released in July, presumably to allow the club to comply with the foreign player limit, with illustrious names like Kurt Zouma, Jean-Michel Seri and Johann Berg Gudmundsson there in Anita’s place. At 35, he’s probably not worth a punt. He wasn’t at 27, to be fair.
OUASIM BOUY
It’s just a relief that Bouy isn’t still contracted to Leeds. He arrived in West Yorkshire during Victor Orta’s first summer at Leeds in 2017, along with Anita and a band of other rejects. I’m not sure he ever actually existed, but he did spend four years under contract and was farmed out on loan for almost two years of that time, first going to Cultural Leonesa and then PEC Zwolle.
He’s played a grand total of 112 senior professional matches in a 16-year career. None of those games were played in the white of Leeds United. Bouy became a free agent in July 2022, having been released by Al-Kharaitiyat SC (where he became bezzies with neighbour Pierre-Michel Lasogga, at least in our imaginations) after their relegation to Qatar’s second tier. The only record I can find of him playing there is a full ninety minutes in a relegation pla-yoff tie that they lost in March 2022.
We definitely shouldn’t sign Bouy because he couldn’t break into our team in four years at the club, so I’m not sure he’s exactly the sort of impact player that we’re looking for right now.
GBOLY ARIYIBI
Who? A former Leeds United midfielder whose career has taken him to Greece, Turkey and Motherwell.
Right before GFH saddled the club with Jimmy Kebe and Cameron Stewart as parting gifts, they signed Ariyibi after a successful trial period. Leeds manager Brian McDermott said: “[He’s] an exciting player, very, very quick. He’s a great lad too.” A ringing endorsement.
Injuries limited him to two appearances in his early months at the club. I hope he was injured anyway, because it would take a serious lack of talent as a winger to have been left out of a team that didn’t have any wingers. He joined Tranmere in March 2014 and spent the rest of the season there, before leaving permanently to Chesterfield, where he played 96 games in three years.
Nottingham Forest signed him in summer 2017 and sent him out on loan for three seasons, the last of which was at Motherwell. After four months in the far east of Glasgow, he set off for the Mediterranean. First, Panetolikos in Greece, before three years in Turkey.
After his European experience, is it time to bring him back to Beeston and pick up where we left off a decade ago? No. It isn’t.
LEE PELTIER
A certified Grizzled Champo Bastard. Get him in, I’m sold. Only joking. I always disliked Peltier, not because I remember him being particularly bad for Leeds, nor was he as objectionable as other players, but he just reminds me of Neil Warnock.
He played in the Premier League for Cardiff, which just doesn’t seem fair. 500+ games in English league football across ten clubs, the last of which was Rotherham. It feels like the end of the road at 37 and I’m not just saying that because that’s where Luciano Becchio’s career went to die. However, if we’re really stuck, an experienced right-back could allow us to perform a reverse Archie Gray on Jayden Bogle. He can’t defend, so why not stick him in central midfield? Sorry, Jayden, that was unnecessary.
Signing Peltier would risk summoning Warnock like some sort of Leeds United Beetlejuice. No thanks.
GIUSEPPE BELLUSCI
Everyone’s favourite Leeds centre-back of the late 2010s is available, having been released by Ascoli after the relegation from Italy’s Serie B. Though some fans have pined for him as someone who ‘got it’, he might be remembered at Ascoli for making a ‘keep talking’ gesture towards the club’s ultras after his goal against Lecco in March.
He asked for forgiveness from the fans and the ultras responded on everyone’s behalf to say, and I’m paraphrasing here, “We’ll forgive you if we don’t get relegated.” Ascoli won two of their last eight games and went down on the final day, at which point Bellusci was released.
So, should we sign him and switch to a back three? Good God, no. Not only because he’s a bit of a prick, and Sol Bamba hated him, but because I saw him play last year and he was given the run around by Caleb Ekuban.
CAMERON BORTHWICK-JACKSON
Can I interest you in a left-back recently released by a Polish club? No, it’s not Barry Douglas. Sorry. It’s CBJ, one of the worst defenders I’ve ever seen play for Leeds. And I’ve seen Paul Connolly and Fede Bessone.
Borthwick-Jackson is a name that is often forgotten among Victor Orta’s first-season madness. Signed as ‘competition’ in a defence that contained big names like Anita, Matthew Pennington and Conor Shaughnessy, he managed to achieve only one Championship appearance and a handful of cup games.
Perhaps I’m rewriting history in my own head, but I decided that CBJ was released back to Manchester United by the club after the Newport County game out of mercy for him. Should we sign him? Well, we’ve already got Largie Ramazani and Joe Rothwell filling our ex-Scum quota, so let’s leave it there, eh?
JEAN-KEVIN AUGUSTIN
Time to get value for money. We’ve already lost in court, having to pay almost £20m to Red Bull Leipzig after trying to dodge signing him in summer 2020 after Leeds were promoted. Poor JKA. He came to Leeds as a hot prospect, the next Olivier Giroud, and left as the second coming of Billy Paynter, just without the bus.
He spent two years on loan at Nantes, playing only eleven times while complaining of the effects of long COVID. Augustin joined Basel in the summer of 2022, a decent move for someone who had barely kicked a ball in three years. He spent the last two seasons there, playing 43 times and scoring eight goals. It seemed like he’d reinvigorated himself somewhat, but he struggled with injuries last season and lost his number 10 shirt to Xherdan Shaqiri in August, two weeks before Basel released him.
Perhaps JKA could be the number 10 that Leeds craved, and he could have his shirt back if he asks Joel Piroe nicely. He wouldn’t have to run ten miles a minute like Marcelo Bielsa wanted him to and could simply just fart around and take pot shots or play some fancy passes.
Brenden Aaronson is having his redemption moment now. Why can’t Big Kev… ⬢
Sunderland: A Mountainous Test Awaits
Leeds United’s busy week of action comes to an end on Friday as they take on Sunderland at the Stadium of Light, their third game in just six days. Daniel Farke’s side took a hard-earned point home from Norwich City on Tuesday evening, with Largie Ramazani the goalscorer in a 1-1 draw, to make it four points from two after Saturday’s comfortable 3-0 win at home to Coventry City.
A second long trip in four days has been made no easier by the spate of injury issues inside the Leeds squad, with Ilia Gruev the latest to be forced off after suffering a knee injury at Carrow Road. The Bulgarian initially returned to play after treatment but was replaced by Joe Rothwell inside the 20th minute.
Speaking in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s draw, Farke admitted the injury ‘doesn’t look great’, with Gruev set for further assessment ahead of Friday’s trip to the table-topping Black Cats. His absence would only worsen the injury crisis at Leeds, with Ethan Ampadu, Max Wober, Manor Solomon, Dan James and Isaac Schmidt all missing Tuesday’s fixture.
Those mounting issues might well have played a part in the decision to take off Largie Ramazani and Willy Gnonto on Tuesday, with Farke having to manage a thin squad during this busy and difficult period. And the Whites boss will likely be quizzed on how he plans to ensure his side are fully firing come Friday, while also offering an update on the aforementioned group.
Sunderland are top of the Championship and unbeaten at home as things stand - a huge challenge for an injury-ravaged Leeds outfit.
A point at Norwich took Leeds to three unbeaten since that defeat at home to Burnley - their sole league loss of the campaign - and Daniel Farke’s side have conceded just one goal in four away games.
The worry comes with the form of their hosts, however, with Sunderland winning four from four at the Stadium of Light and not conceding a single goal. They’ve started brilliantly.
Leeds could be top of the Championship by full-time on Friday, with Daniel Farke’s side two points off Sunderland and two behind on goal difference. A two-goal win would put them first, courtesy of goals scored.
However, a heavy defeat could see them drop out of the play-off places having played a game more than those inside the top-six. Fine margins.
