, Why Swansea City refused to sell Daniel James to Leeds United

Why Swansea City refused to sell Daniel James to Leeds United

Former Swansea City chairman Huw Jenkins has told Wales Online that he refused to sell Daniel James to Leeds United because he wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to pay up for him.

One of the transfer sagas of January 2017 in the EFL was the potential move of James to Leeds. It was rumoured throughout the window and it appeared to be close to completion as deadline day neared. Reports suggested Leeds were going to sign James on loan with them having the option of signing him on a permanent deal worth £2m in the summer.

In the end, that deal did not end up happening with fans coming up with all sorts of conspiracy theories about it. For Swansea, pulling out of the deal ended up working out. They would go on to sell James in the summer to Manchester United for a fee believed to be north of £15m, much more than what they would have got for Leeds.

And Jenkins has now revealed the reason they didn’t sell James as he thought it was mad to sell to a team that might not even pay up in the summer.

Jenkins said: “When I was first invited to run the club the directors gave me a lot of freedom. We had a good system in place, they had trust in me and provided good support. People like Martin Morgan, Leigh Dineen were excellent.

“With the changes gradually more and more people were getting involved. I recall with Dan James there were six people interfering, trying to make a decision that day.

“I was told a deal was in place for Dan to go to Leeds. It made no sense to me, not for Swansea City financially because there was nothing in it for us.

“As much as others felt the deal could have been done and we could have got something out of it, to me Dan going up to Leeds at the time, risk injury, us rely on a summer transfer, was wrong. I wasn’t even sure Leeds would pay the loan fee until the summer.

“I spoke to Graham Potter about it. Remember, part of his mantra was to bring through younger players while making the team competitive. Dan was an important part of that. Graham wanted him to remain until the end of the season and play for Swansea. In playing regularly for us, we felt we would get more value out of any future deal.”

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