Busy summer of transfers continues at Elland Road TSS August 22, 2014 Transfer News 63 Comments Leeds United completed the signing of Mirco Antenucci this week bringing the total number of strikers David Hockaday has at his disposal to nine. While the likes of Noel Hunt and Steve Morison could be shipped out without anyone losing too much sleep and there’s every chance Lewis Walters and Dom Poleon will be loaned out at some stage, as things stand, The Whites undoubtedly have a surplus of forwards – unless that is, Cellino’s masterplan includes some kind of inverted Christmas tree formation (it could work!), in which case, 9 would just about cover the ‘2 players for every position’ requirement he set. But when you’ve just signed a ninth striker and are still desperately lacking in other areas, Cellino’s system can feel very random, like we’re playing a game of casino slots, trying to hedge our bets by increasing the amount of lines and hoping one or two of them results in a big windfall offsetting the cost of the rest, and in many ways, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Aside from Billy Sharp whose pedigree at this level is without question, Leeds haven’t brought in anyone who really gets the heart-racing despite the £11m sum received from the sale of Ross McCormack. Instead, Cellino has focused on players who are available for very little, he believes have potential and are young enough to command a high resale value if they manage to prove themselves by impressing in the English Championship. This may sound like a negative slant on Cellino’s transfer policy (“he’s just buying a load of cheap players with potential he hopes to cash-in on later”), but it’s not a million miles from what he did at Cagliari and if we are to be promoted in the next couple of seasons, it’s probably the right way to go about things – if only because a promoted team is going to see a huge amount of player turnover and many of those we’re signing now will probably be shipped out. With an average age of 24.7 years, a figure which includes 33-year-old back-up goalkeeper Stuart Taylor raising the average, most of the players we’ve signed have many years ahead of them, which is of course, a good thing. But there’s a lot to be said for experience, particularly experience which comes with proven ability at this level, for Leeds are at the start of a long Championship season which is going to serve as a steep learning curve to many of our new recruits and a few players who can come straight in and ease that burden would be hugely beneficial. None of this means we should go out and sign the journeyman freebies of yesteryear of course, nor does it mean that unknowns (relatively unknown to us at least) with potential won’t get the job done, but a few more players in the Billy Sharp mold – good age, proven quality, experienced at this level – wouldn’t go amiss. On and on…