Bundesliga club 'in talks' with Leeds United man as ex-Nottingham Forest boss favourite for Championship job

Leeds United will spend another season in the Championship after suffering a narrow 1-0 loss against Southampton in the play-off final at Wembley on Sunday. Adam Armstrong’s first-half goal was enough to separate the sides in a game of few chances.

Dan James struck the underside of the bar with a volley from the edge of the box towards the end of the second half as Leeds came agonisingly close to promotion yet again. The Whites amassed 90 points during the regular season but still had to settle for the play-offs.

Planning will now begin for next season as Leeds eye promotion again, with Luton Town, Sheffield United and Burnley set to be among their possible promotion rivals after they were relegated from the Premier League.

Monchengladbach want permanent Wober deal

Borussia Monchengladbach want to convert Max Wober’s loan move from Leeds United to a permanent deal this summer, according to reports in his native Austria. The Austrian joined Leeds from RB Salzburg in January 2023. He impressed in his first six months with the Whites but left for the Bundesliga last summer following Leeds’ relegation from the Premier League.

According to Kronen Zeitung, via Sports Witness, Monchengladbach want Wober to return to the club this summer and will look to agree a deal with Leeds for a permanent move. However, previous reports from German publication Bild claim the Bundesliga club are only willing to pay just shy of £8m for Wober which is below Leeds’ reported valuation of the player. The defender joined the Whites for a fee in the region of £11m.

The club’s sporting director Roland Virkus has previously made clear his desire to keep Wober, and revealed talks have been held. He recently said: “We are in talks with everyone involved, of course we would like to keep Max with us. But the demands are extremely high.”

Cooper favourite for Burnley vacancy

Former Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper is the early favourite to replace Vincent Kompany at Burnley. Widespread reports over the weekend claimed the Clarets had agreed a staggering £10.2m in compensation to allow Kompany to make the move to Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich. The German outfit have struggled to find a replacement for Thomas Tuchel, suffering a number of rejections from managerial targets while talks to keep Tuchel at the club also failed.

Burnley are expected to be one of the clubs who will challenge Leeds for promotion next term. They breezed to the Championship title in the 2022-23 season but were sent straight back down to the second tier after winning just five of their 38 league games and finishing eight points behind Forest, who had been hit with a four-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules.

Cooper has been out of work since being sacked by Forest earlier this season, having previously guided the club into the Premier League via the play-offs. Former Chelsea, Derby County and Everton manager Frank Lampard and recently-sacked Hull City boss Liam Rosenior are among some of the other names linked as Kompany prepares to head off to Germany.