Don’t Believe All That You Read About Chris Wood’s Transfer Status, He’s Going Nowhere
The word on the footballing street is that Premier League clubs West Ham and Sunderland are contemplating bids for Chris Wood, All Whites vice-captain, Leeds striker and Flying Kiwis leading goal scorer. Obviously Leeds would be pretty resistant towards selling the big NZer when he’s scored 40% of their Championship goals this season, helping boost them all the way up to third on the table. Yeah, that’s not someone you part ways with when nobody else has more than four league goals, compared to Woody’s 14. Not if you’re serious about a promotion challenge.
Which is why the same rumours reckon Leeds have slapped a £15m price tag on the fella. Considering that he moved there only 18 months ago from Leicester for around £3m, that’s playing hardball alright. Either that or it’s completely untrue.
That’s the thing about transfer rumours in the world of footy: 99% of them are utter trash. Or if that’s a little harsh, they’re at least exaggerated or taken out of context. The transfer market doesn’t unfold the way fans think it does, fees aren’t the be all and end all, while ‘negotiations’ aren’t exactly the courtroom dramas we like to imagine. Most important of all is that they’re outrageously secretive and if rumours happen to find their way into the papers then you’re naïve to think they weren’t leaked there deliberately by one party or another.
Yes, your transfer gossip fix is somebody else’s bargaining tool.
Which provides us with four parties to be aware of: the club, the other club, the player and the media. The media are irrelevant because while they’re behind probably at least half of these rumours through their own particular method of joining dots to make shapes that maybe aren’t there in real life, if a transfer rumour is a media fabrication then there’s nothing to be learned. Just more idle clickbait.
Both West Ham and Sunderland have had appalling records in recent seasons with buying strikers (with the exception of Sunderland’s Jermain Defoe, without whom they’d have been relegated last season and he’s keeping them with hope this year too – funnily enough he’s a West Ham junior and the Hammers have been strongly linked with buying him back this window as well), anyway yeah, West Ham and Sunderland each need a striker (if not two) and Chris Wood has been scoring goals in the Championship. In the past that might not have meant much but guys like Jamie Vardy, Charlie Austin, Troy Deeney and Callum Wilson are proving that a proper goal scorer can put them away at any level. It makes some sense that they might look to the Championship for answers and the Hammers have already been strongly linked with Scott Hogan from Brentford (which in contrast to Woody’s move could truly happen). Both Hogan and Wood have scored 14 Champo goals this term.
So perhaps it’s the other club putting these words out there. West Ham are trying to sign this Hogan lad but are struggling to get over with some of the details, so what they do is they leak a story saying they’re looking at this other fella who they can maybe get for cheaper, forcing Brentford to put up or shut up. Since Brentford, unlike Leeds, aren’t seriously looking at a run for promotion, that kind of fee is probably too good to refuse. This could be leverage for West Ham, with Sunderland along for the ride because they’re gonna be linked with anyone that might realistically agree to sign for Sunderland, which largely excludes Premier League players. There’s a very legit chance that if Woody signed for Sunderland then he’d be back in the Championship next season anyway.
Why would Leeds leak stories like this? One reason would be to emphasise that price tag and pre-emptively put off any suitors. For £15m you can buy an international standard striker from Holland or Spain with much better pedigree than Woody, just being honest here. That’s only a few mill short of what Arsenal paid for Lucas Perez. It also happens to be the same price that Brentford are demanding for Hogan – … wonder if those two have ever met, there seem to be a few coincidences here? By the way, part of the drama there is that Rochdale have a 30% sell-on clause so Brentford will wanna drive the price as high as possible (they would anyway, but yeah) since they’re only getting 70% of it anyway.
(When Leeds played Brentford in December, they won 1-0 at Elland Road. Hogan played and was average, Wood was out injured).
Or perhaps Leeds, a formerly massive club which has been through some awful times since relegation from the top flight in 2004 and currently the closest to getting back there that they’ve been in all that time, just wanna flex their muscles now that things are going well. Look at us, our players are so good that Premier League clubs want them!
Realistically there’s no reason at all for Leeds to be serious about selling him. No reason to even think they’d consider it. This is a rare opportunity for them and the Championship is notoriously brutal to escape (except through the basement door, of course). You don’t risk that by swapping strikers and hoping some other joker can do as well as the incumbent has done. Whether or not they’d want to upgrade on him if and when they do make the top division is another thing but the way things stand they won’t make it without him. Leeds’ new joint-owner Andrea Radrizzani would be an insane man to try cash now when the potential cash influx of a PL return completely dwarfs the profits they’d make in the short term with a quick sale.
The most likely explanation is that this is the work of a clever and opportunistic player agent (aren’t they all?). When Wood signed for Leeds, he was a dude who’d scored a lot of goals at times in his career but never consistently. He was a valuable part in getting Leicester City promoted, playing almost entirely of the bench but still providing four goals and four assists in 919 minutes of footy (7 starts, 19 subs apps in the Champo – he also scored four goals in three League Cup games). His eight goals that season were more than Riyad Mahrez managed, including this belter that helped seal the title:
Except that when they got promoted they went and bought Leonardo Ulloa to be their big bopper striker and Wood was left on the outer… aside from his late equaliser against Everton, his first and so far only Premier League goal. He’d been told that playing time would be scarce yet chose to stick around and fight for a place. Seven substitute appearances were all he got and he was loaned to Ipswich in January, linking up with Tommy Smith just as a move to West Ham would link him up with Winston Reid. There are some dots to join for ya, Daily Mail and company. Woody was goalless in eight games for Ipswich and many eyebrows were raised when Leeds coughed up multiple millions of pounds for him the next summer.
Woody was with West Brom in the Premier League back in his early days in England though never scored a goal. It wasn’t until a spell with Brighton on loan in League One that he started scoring, form that he followed up in 2011-12 with Birmingham a division upwards. Until Leeds, his best return was 11 goals on loan with Millwall in 2012-13. This is a striker who has only recently emerged as a legitimate bringer of goals and this half-season to date is comfortably his finest as a pro. That’s not to say he’s incapable of making it in the Premier League (although there are some doubts), more to say that despite the fee they signed him for, Wood probably isn’t the highest paid player on the team. At 25 he’s got his peak years ahead of him and his contract runs out in June 2019.
Maybe, just maybe (but also probably)… this is a ploy to get a wage hike. If it is then you go for it, lad. You deserve it.
For the record, this is what the ESPN FC exclusive had to say:
“West Ham United and Sunderland are interested in Leeds United striker Chris Wood, but have been put off by the Championship club's valuation of the New Zealand international, sources close to the player have told ESPN FC.”
Sources close to the player, you say? Hmm…