Woodgate bid back on?

Earlier in the week Terry Venables had insisted that Woodgate, Alan Smith and Harry Kewell were not for sale at any price, but with an unexpected £7million (or £4.5million if you believe some reports) hole in their balance sheet the Leeds Sporting plc board may take a different view.

One complicating factor is that the England defender has picked up a thigh injury in training and will reportedly miss at least the next six weeks of the season, meaning that any buying club would be faced with a wage bill in the region of £180,000 before Woodgate could even train again.

The Journal today quotes a possibly fictitious Leeds insider as saying: "The management were 100 per cent certain that the Fowler deal would go through and as a result the club spent all of Wednesday negotiating a £4m deal for the Brazilian midfielder Kleberson.

"If, as seems the case, that deal is now too far down the road then there is a pressing need to raise the money from a sale elsewhere. Woodgate and Seth Johnson are the only players generating any interest and one will have to go.

"If Newcastle bid £10m for Woody then I can't see how Leeds could turn that down. The door is open."

There’s no doubting that we could use Woodgate, but with Titus Bramble approaching full fitness it may be that the club will wait for Daniel van Buyten in the summer.