While everyone in Leeds may be happy and content with Ao Tanaka’s arrival, some have not taken it so well and Rheinische Post are one of them.
We’ve covered several instances of them acting a bit weird over the transfer and they’ve continued that today.
Rheinische Post explain how Tanaka’s late move to Leeds this summer ‘caused unrest’ at Fortuna Dusseldorf this summer and even left manager Daniel Thioune ‘seething’ with anger when he was told it was happening.
The 50-year-old ‘vehemently’ opposed the player departing but that proved to be for nought as he eventually did end up at Leeds.
Dusseldorf argues that it was a good deal for them as the player was unhappy, wouldn’t reach his best performance levels because of that and would leave them on a free in the summer anyway. In other words, it made sense to sell while they could.
Leeds had already expressed an interest but Tanaa was not always first choice and various arguments had to be settled before the deal was done for €3.5m plus €500,000 in bonuses.
While there was unhappiness about the deal initially, the newspaper now says it’s turned out to be a ‘blessing in disguise’.
That’s because they feel the German club have ended up with better players in Tanaka’s replacements Myron von Brederode and Valgeir Lunddal Fridriksson.
They feel Dusseldorf have done well to sell Tanaka to Leeds for €3.5m and then sign the likes of Fredriksson for €200,000 to replace him. As far as they’re concerned, they managed to secure a ‘significant increase in the quality of the squad’ with the money.
That feels like a little dig at Tanaka, and an unnecessary one to be truthful, in what is becoming a growing list of odd comments from the newspaper since he left for Leeds.
