Phil Hay: Pablo Hernandez may prove exception to contract rule at Leeds United

YOU could call them the 2021 Club. The collection of players courted in sequence by Leeds United with four-year contracts in 2017.
Pablo Hernandez.Pablo Hernandez.
Pablo Hernandez.

Others at Elland Road have 12 months longer, some 12 months less, but, in almost every case, the can of negotiations has been kicked a mile down the road.

Leeds, as a squad, are contracted to the hilt.

They did things differently in these parts once, inclined to dither or hold off for so long that clubs saw a chance to flatter desirable footballers and cherry-pick their signatures, and the ordeal that has been the second half of this season makes you wonder if Leeds have strayed too far in the opposite direction, but there are, at least, no grounds for many of their players to complain about feeling unloved.

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“The club gave everything to them in terms of new contracts,” Andrea Radrizzani said in an interview with the YEP last month. “Now they need to stand up.”

To one side of the mass of contractual paperwork is Pablo Hernandez, the only outfield player at Leeds who is past his 30th birthday and the only first-team player with the right to a free transfer this summer.

It might be his right but Hernandez seems reluctant to exercise it, more interested, he says, in a third year at Elland Road than pastures new after two.

Earlier this week Victor Orta described Hernandez’s willingness to stay as “the first step towards an agreement”, though it is hard to imagine that an agreement would involve endless steps. An offer to him, if Leeds want to keep him, would be the obvious place to start.

Samuel Saiz.Samuel Saiz.
Samuel Saiz.
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Hernandez is an attractive midfielder, the sort who stands out in the havoc of the Championship crowd and the sort you wish was 21 again.

On a day like Saturday, when 24 fouls punctuated United’s win over Brentford, the precious commodity which is flair in this league was evermore admirable.

Hernandez had an injury and missed that set-to but Samuel Saiz was there, flying the flag for finesse in between being tackled to death.

These players – the protagonists who instinctively play forwards – are high in value, as any analysis of this season will show: six assists for Hernandez and five for Saiz and Gjanni Alioski. Those three have shared 15 league goals.

Gjanni Alioski.Gjanni Alioski.
Gjanni Alioski.
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Where Saiz differs significantly from Hernandez is in his physical strength and his resistance to attempts to bully him out of the fray.

Saiz has, despite his minute frame, the physique for a 46-game season and at no stage in two years has Hernandez shown the same stamina.

Hernandez is a horse for the right course and both Garry Monk and Thomas Christiansen were guilty of gauging his suitability poorly in certain games. Monk had the excuse of lacking a second number 10. Christiansen did not seem to appreciate that venues like Millwall and Cardiff are where Hernandez fairs worst.

In that there is a message about the sort of footballer Hernandez should be at Elland Road: a squad player with clear and undiminished talent, skilful enough to be used routinely but, at the age of 32, no more than a cog in the machine. Put plainly, a club in the Championship for whom Hernandez is undroppable are in trouble when it comes to getting promoted from it and there is something about a struggling side which accentuates the ability of a footballer to come up with goals or assists from nothing. Hernandez has carried Leeds in patches of this season, not least while Saiz served the penance of his six-game ban.

Samuel Saiz.Samuel Saiz.
Samuel Saiz.
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The fact that United needed to be carried is why their season has taken so many hits.

There are two scenarios in which Hernandez could be seen as dispensable this summer: firstly, by Leeds improbably gatecrashing the Premier League and reaching a level where the Spaniard might be hard-pressed to thrive again. Or secondly, that the surgery on the squad before another season in the Championship is so thorough and high-end that there is genuinely no scope for Hernandez to feature in anything other than an emergency.

But surgical changes are challenging for Leeds. Their wage bill, according to Radrizzani, is as high as they are willing to push it – up £7m on last season – and the club cannot clear the decks at low cost. Virtually every player is contracted for next season. No fewer than 12 are contracted to 2021 or beyond.

Hernandez is a long way past the age where four-year deals apply, but it is hard to equate the evidence of this season with the idea that he of all players on the books at Elland Road will prove to be expendable.

There is a difference between Leeds wanting to move on from Hernandez and being ready to.