While Jesse Marsch will quickly be making an assessment of his current group of players at Leeds United, he will no doubt also be keeping a close eye on the players who are away from Elland Road at the moment.
One of those is Helder Costa, who joined La Liga side Valencia on a season-long loan last summer with an option-to-buy included for the Spanish giants.
Reports last summer suggested that the Whites were open to letting him go on a permanent basis, seeing him as someone who could be sold for decent money to then be reinvested into the squad.
Costa had a woeful campaign in the Premier League last season for the Whites, scoring just three times and providing only three assists in 22 games – indeed, he has found the back of the net only eight times in 71 matches altogether for Leeds.
His time on loan at Valencia has been worse even than that, managing no goals and just the one assist in 19 La Liga games, with his poor form now seeing him completely drop out of the first-team picture and being restricted to stoppage time cameos in recent weeks.
After a particularly disappointing performance in the Premier League against Liverpool last season, former Leeds striker Noel Whelan criticised the Portuguese winger, telling Football Insider: “The one player that disappointed me was Helder Costa. Once again he was poor. There is something there that is not right because Poveda came on and did more in that short time than Costa did in the 60 minutes he was on the field.
“He is fourth in the pecking order in terms of wingers for me. Poveda has to come before him now. He plays it safe and he’s negative. For a player that cost £16m, I need to see a hell of a lot more from him. At least Poveda runs at people. He is positive and that is what a winger should do. Costa has been a massive flop. A real disappointment again.”
Indeed, former Leeds player Carlton Palmer has previously said of Costa to FFC: “You look at things and say, if you’re looking to spend the type of money that Leeds are looking to spend, if you’ve got someone there on decent money and they aren’t playing regular football, then those are the type to move on enable you to use his salary to bring in the players that you want, who are going to make your squad a better squad.”
Earning around £70k-a-week, Costa is one of the Whites’ highest earners at Elland Road, but he has done nothing to suggest that he is worthy of being in that category of players, and he is simply burning a hole in Andrea Radrizzani’s pocket.
Given that his record overall at Leeds has been shocking to say the least, this summer must finally see the end of Costa’s time at the club.
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