Arriving at the end of January on loan from Leeds United, Diego Llorente has only played the one minute for AS Roma so far.
The Spaniard was sent to Italy after failing to convince Jesse Marsch this season, and Victor Orta agreed to include an option to buy that the Serie A side could trigger if they were pleased with his performances.
He’ll need to play a lot more before then, and the belief is the Leeds loanee will certainly be given a chance between now and the end of the season by José Mourinho.
That’s according to Corriere dello Sport, who explain that while Llorente knows the Portuguese manager well from their time at Real Madrid together, he ‘obviously needs time to adapt’ to his new surroundings.
Therefore, the reason why the Leeds man has been on the bench so much isn’t because he doesn’t have what Mourinho wants, but more because he wants him to get acclimatised to Italian football and Roma before giving him a real chance.
We will now have to wait and see if things improve for Llorente going forward, but with 14 games left to play in Serie A, there is still plenty of time for him to get his minutes and potentially earn Leeds a few million come the end of the season.
