Phil Hay's Column: Leeds United and Kiko Casilla - a signing for today, with a glance to a better future tomorrow

Transition is the watchword for promoted squads and a process which can make a coach as admired as Slavisa Jokanovic was in the Championship (and still is, to gauge by Stoke City’s attempt to court him) redundant before Christmas. Most Championship clubs lack the depth of pocket to carry assets like Neves and the risk of making signings in preparation for promotion is the cost of excessive wages if promotion goes sideways. Neves is an elite athlete. The average Premier League footballer in the Championship is defined as such on the basis that he once played at that level.

Leeds United have been outside the marquee for too long to be carrying any wage-bill legacies from time in the company of England’s glitterati and promotion this season would expose their squad to a brave new world. Marcelo Bielsa has four players with Premier League appearances behind them, and three if he discounts one who isn’t his in Izzy Brown. They have 82 starts between them, 74 of which can be apportioned to Pablo Hernandez and Adam Forshaw. Patrick Bamford was in and out briefly with Crystal Palace, Burnley, Norwich City and Middlesbrough, so briefly that a full year there will still be on his bucket list.

Knowledge of a division carries an irregular value, as Leeds found out when they tried to use Neil Warnock to crack the Championship in the way that he has with almost every other club who employed him, and the mess that Fulham are making of £100m-worth of signings is a warning against the impulse of gutting a settled team on the basis of doubts about their ability to cope, but in taking this Leeds squad up, Marcelo Bielsa would have little more than his own coaching brain to judge their suitability for the Premier League.

Kiko Casilla, the Real Madrid goalkeeper who Leeds intend to sign this week, has never played a Premier League game in his life. He has never set foot in an English club and he has never played anywhere other than Spain but for the duration of his career he has mixed in the right circles: La Liga, the Champions League and short-term exposure to international football with the Spanish squad in 2014. Keepers and left-backs have brought the worst out of Leeds’ scouting department in the past decade but the club would be wholly disappointed to sign Casilla, only to discover what looked like a top-flight transfer was in fact an illusion.

There was another alternative in this transfer window, the alternative which Leeds have been falling back on with awful levels of success throughout their open-ended stay in the Championship. A loanee would have given Bielsa an alternative to Bailey Peacock-Farrell for the second half of the season, potentially adequate for helping Leeds finish it off in the way they want, and Karl Darlow was that option; a £4m-rated player who United made inroads with around Christmas but were not prepared to pay so much for.

Darlow has won the Championship title before and, behind a defence which tends to give Bielsa’s keeper a minimal amount of work to do anyway, might have been a dependable pair of hands. But promoted or not, a stopgap would have left Leeds in the position of having no contracted number one in the summer. Casilla, if he signs, will join permanently on a substantial wage but a salary which United can factor into their financial structure by virtue of avoiding the payment of any fee to Real Madrid. He is affordable in the Championship but, quite plainly, a keeper who Leeds would expect to serve them competently in the Premier League next season. A signing for today and a signing for tomorrow, as opposed to one or the other.

The accuracy of that perception depends on Casilla settling and floating Bielsa’s boat when the Argentinian shows him how Bielsa-ball really works. Casilla was a regular with Espanyol for the best part of three years, under Mauricio Pochettino for a while, but he has been an understudy at the Bernabeu since 2015. Any transition for him will begin first with swapping La Liga for the Championship but the transfer was expressly approved by Bielsa. He analysed Casilla, saw what he needed in him and told Leeds to start the car. As his rapid split of the wheat and the chaff at Thorp Arch last summer demonstrated, Bielsa is good at knowing which players fit.

With that appreciation of ability, he will know already which members of his squad could cut it in the Premier League if he and Leeds cross the Rubicon in May but the club are savvy in serving up signings which look prepped to play there at face value. Minus the money which Wolves possess, a team in United’s league position in January have to find the middle ground between pushing the boat out excessively and gambling too safely. The club cannot count chickens yet but they can mitigate the size of the jump they are trying to take by actively preparing for it.