Ex-Leeds United star issues ‘disappointing’ verdict on Andrea Radrizzani’s deleted Angus Kinnear tweet

Former Leeds United star Paul Robinson has hit back at Andrea Radrizzani over his public response to Angus Kinnear.

Leeds chief Kinnear spoke out recently about some of the issues that have arisen at Elland Road over recent times, including some of the club’s less than ideal business. The Whites installed exit clauses that came into force in the case of relegation into many of their signing’s contracts, and those contracts lost the club money over the summer.

Record signing Rodrigo Moreno left for just £3million, while the club were also forced to sell Tyler Adams due to a relegation release clause.

In other cases, loan clauses were agreed to ensure players could avoid playing in the Championship, saving the club money in wages in the process.

Kinnear said of the clauses in a LUFC Trust meeting: “It was financially prudent to ensure players would have had to accept significant wage cuts. Angus explained that their insistence was on these exit and/or loan clauses as a trade off for the wage cuts.

“Their position was that if the club were to sign the players and fend off competition for their signatures, exit clauses needed to be written in. Players that left would have preferred to leave on permanent deals.

“But values had fallen behind both their exit clauses and, book value. For profit and sustainability/FFP reasons it is problematic to sell players below book values. The loans have saved over £30m in salaries. The hope is that their sell-on values would increase again (from the low position of a relegation season) during a year playing on loan, meaning the club will be able to generate profits from sales.”

On the back of those comments, former Leeds owner Radrizzani has tweeted ahead of deleting his X account: “[Kinnear] should have taken good responsibility of the contracts with exit clause which I have never read as for many others contracts and company. That’s why management is paid for!”

Former Leeds goalkeeper Robinson has now had his say during an interview with MOT Leeds News, crticising Radrizzani for airing his dirty laundry.

“It’s disappointing that Radrizzani feels the need to air that type of thoughts and feelings on social media. I don’t buy into that,” said Robinson. “I think there were flaws with the football club and the way that he ran the football club and I don’t think that you can aim shots like that.

“Kinnear, I think he’s been an outstanding asset to the football club, the business side of things has been absolutely run perfectly in recent times. I think you look at Radrizzani, you look at the people around him, you look at Victor Orta for example. When Kinnear was telling Radrizzani one thing, maybe Orta was in the other ear telling him something else and he may listen to the wrong person too often, which cost him a lot of money and transfer fees and players that didn’t succeed.

“When you leave something, it’s very easy to decry other people’s work when you’ve left and you’ve gone and you’ve moved on to other things. If Kinnear had more of an input in the daily running of the football club, certain things may not have happened. There’s always going to be a breakdown in relationships when somebody leaves the football club, I just find it very disappointing that in this day and age, somebody like that feels the need to do the laundry on social media when it’s such a high power position at the football club.

“From a fan perspective, we have a very clear indication of the type of person that you’re dealing with. I think Angus is very cool, calm, and calculated and will say all in a statement, he won’t reply on Twitter.”