Towards the end of January, it was clear that Diego Llorente’s future at Leeds United was in the balance, and the Spaniard was sent on loan to AS Roma until the end of the season.
The Elland Road side have since sacked Jesse Marsch and eventually appointed Javi Gracia as his replacement after failing to strike deals for many other managerial targets.
The new manager will first have the task of guiding Leeds away from the relegation zone, and will stay on with the Whites should he manage to do so.
That would then give him a transfer window to ship out unwanted players and bring in new ones, all the while welcoming back a few faces, like Llorente.
The Leeds defender was loaned with an option to buy, but the fact he has played just the one minute of football to date under José Mourinho doesn’t bode well for his future.
That came at the end of a game against Empoli in his first week there, and he has stayed stuck to the bench ever since.
Roma Giallorossa had an article on Roma’s defence over the weekend, where they look at the Leeds loanee’s situation.
They state that the player, ‘after a whole month of training with his new team’, is currently ‘counting on getting a glimpse of the spotlight’, and certainly needs to in order to ‘find the right team for next season’.
That doesn’t suggest Roma will be his next destination, but there has been positive feedback, stating that ‘those who have seen him train describe him as a very good defender with the ball’.
Whether that ‘will be enough for Mourinho’ remains to be seen, but, as things stand, a return to Leeds looks on the cards unless his game time drastically improves in the coming months.
