Gnonto, Sinisterra, Harrison and the death of romance at Leeds United

Willy Gnonto will have his reasons but no one in the away end at St Andrews was interested in hearing them. Refusing to play is football’s cardinal sin, albeit up against some stiff competition, and the chants got going in the first minute at Birmingham City: “Refuse to play, you don’t come back.” And other things less printable.

The game diverted attention soon enough, dreadful though it was, but Leeds United are in one of those fixes where what is on the pitch is occupying the mind less than what isn’t. Max Aarons ditching a move to Elland Road to sign for Bournemouth on Wednesday was a hard knock but, however you cut it, his prerogative too. Gnonto declining to turn out at Birmingham was Leeds being stiffed by one of their own, a red rag to a crowd who have hardly been enjoying this summer anyway.

Gnonto risked burning the bridges built by the panache he showed last season and if, somehow, he did not anticipate the way the court of opinion would rail against him, the songbook at St Andrews said it all. Leeds had tried to protect him after his non-appearance in the Carabao Cup last week, saying as little as possible for as long as they could, but their straight admission on Friday night that Gnonto had asked not to travel to Birmingham was indicative of a loss of patience, if not a willingness to lose Gnonto himself.

So there goes another love affair, a player-crowd relationship which now looks like a fumble in the bushes which meant nothing and means nothing. What does mean anything in football? A club’s aura resonates when times are good but this summer at Leeds has shown that no shortage of characters will sidle away when the music stops, whatever there was to smile about previously. Business supersedes football and romance, for the time being, is dead; not that Leeds’ recruitment to this point is encouraging anyone to think that the Championship is theirs to rout.

Added to the Gnonto saga was confusion about Luis Sinisterra, nowhere to be seen at Birmingham and not in the travelling party either. Farke would go no further than describing him as “unavailable”, precisely the code he used when he first implied that there were problems with Gnonto’s attitude. Sinisterra’s contract has a release clause, something Gnonto’s does not, so Leeds are even less able to control what he does next and while Sinisterra has concerns about one of his knees, the drain of motivation in certain corners of the squad felt like it was spreading. Gnonto, for one, is expected to train alone for now, away from Farke’s main group.

Gnonto’s non-appearance in Wednesday’s League Cup tie against Shrewsbury Town told a story about where his head was at but he kept Leeds guessing by arriving for training as planned on Thursday and Friday and training with enough gusto for Farke to plan to use him for Birmingham. It was only as the team bus was preparing to leave that Gnonto told Farke that he did not want to make the trip; that his head was still elsewhere and, if he got his way, so was his future.

Part of his motivation for agitating to go is that he is under the impression that his inclusion in the Italy squad for the Euros next summer will depend on him playing top-flight football before then. But unlike Sinisterra and Adams, who was signing for Chelsea until he wasn’t on Friday afternoon, Gnonto’s contract with Leeds contains no exit provision in his favour, preventing him from engineering a transfer easily. Leeds’ new ownership, in what is developing into a major test of resolve, told Gnonto early last week that he would not be sold and reiterated that message to him after he pulled out of the Birmingham match. Everton, the club who seem keenest on him, have offered less than £20m, nothing like the fee 49ers Enterprises would value him at.

There is, inevitably, a price for every footballer so, as the land lies, Leeds can only contemplate two possible scenarios: that they stand their ground and make Gnonto stay, pulling rank despite the 19-year-old’s intentions, or they force another club to pay so heavily for him that retaining him no longer makes sense. Paraag Marathe, the club’s chairman, described contracts and player negotiations as his “wheelhouse” but there is no exaggerating the extent to which players hold power in European football; the extent to which a club’s desire to be methodical, scientific or strategic can be threatened by football’s inherent madness, or a window as generally stupid as this one. Marathe will not want to be dictated to by a teenage winger with half a season in the Premier League behind him. But how often does a conflict like this result in a parting of ways?

Farke made a telling comment on Thursday, albeit in relation to relegation-release clauses, when he said that he only wanted “players who are fully committed”. There is no pretending that Gnonto is. And in that there is a depressing tale about what happens when a club go down: that so few footballers see the responsibility as theirs, or not to the extent that they will park their own egos to hang around and redeem it. There is a remarkable amount of failing upwards going on, of men bombing Leeds into the Championship but sorting themselves out regardless. Many of the faces who got annihilated by Tottenham on the last day of last season are either long gone or heading that way.

For Adams comes the wait to see if anyone gives him an alternative to Chelsea. For Jack Harrison, Premier League attention is coming his way, again the strongest of it from Everton, and there is a high likelihood that he departs. Sinisterra’s absence begs the question and however much of a part his knee played in that, you wouldn’t hold your breath in the remainder of the window. Leeds’ actual fixtures have had to battle for a look-in in the first week of a season, attention distracted by the juice of the transfer market.

Farke, throughout, has been measured but honest, working to get the show on the road without sugar-coating much of what is around him. There was no sugar-coating the choices open to him at Birmingham, choices so minimal that his bench had eight players on it, two of them goalkeepers. Once there was a plethora of wingers. Now there was Jamie Shackleton wide on the right. It wasn’t as if Gnonto alone would have changed that — and that in itself is tying Farke’s hands — but there was no apparent compunction on his part to help Farke avoid having to turn water into wine. United’s manager is unfairly exposed and a goalless draw at Birmingham, a result Leeds nearly got, was about as much as he could have looked for. Lukas Jutkiewicz’s 91st-minute penalty stirred the pot further, inflicting a 1-0 defeat.

Farke, as before, held back from going in on Gnonto or Sinisterra but he did not mix his words when it came to the personal investment he expected from his squad. “I’m quite pragmatic,” he said. “If someone doesn’t want to be with us, he goes out of the dressing room and won’t train with us. I only want people who are fully focused and committed. I’m not begging or praying ‘please, please play for us.’ Because this club is too big.”

Quite right. There are, of course, instances of true love between players and clubs. There are instances of true love between managers and clubs too, one of which Leeds lived through very recently, but a week like this tells a harsh truth about the game. Supporters look for heroes. Sometimes they find them. Supporters believe their club is bigger than one person and sometimes players abide by that code too. But in the cold light of day, this is too often a game of human traffic; a game in which so many protagonists are merely passing through.

(Photo: Gustavo Pantano/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)