Leeds United might well have a reported £100m in the bank to spend on new players ahead of their Premier League voyage, but the Whites have plenty of talent already being organically grown on the youth pitches at Thorp Arch.
After all, even when Championship promotion was narrowly missed at the end of the 2023/24 campaign, Archie Gray stood out as a homegrown gem, leading to a £30m deal with Tottenham Hotspur being agreed.
Moreover, if we move away from more recent examples with Daniel Farke at the helm, Marcelo Bielsa also had a huge part to play in Kalvin Phillips turning into an England regular, with the Leeds-born midfielder still eternally grateful to his hometown side.
Kalvin Phillips' unbelievable rise at Leeds
Nobody could have quite anticipated the unbelievable rise Phillips would enjoy at Elland Road, with the local starlet eventually leaving the comforts of West Yorkshire behind when a £45m move to Manchester City came to be.
Eight years prior to his big move to the Etihad, however, Phillips was a wide-eyed starlet attempting to cut his teeth with the Whites, with his first moment in the senior spotlight coming during the 2014/15 season under former youth coach Neil Redfearn.
The rest is now history for the 29-year-old, with those opportunities under Redfearn catapulting Phillips into a first-team regular, before Bielsa went on to refine the midfield battler’s game even more when he took over duties in the Elland Road dug-out.
By the end of his celebrated spell at Leeds, Phillips would notch up 14 goals and 13 assists from 234 total clashes, with his heroics also helping his beloved outfit gain promotion up to the Premier League under the eccentric South American.
Amazingly, there is another gem entirely of Leeds’ own making that has just tasted the glory of promotion, with the potential here for another new starlet to surpass Phillips and become an even brighter talent.
Leeds' finest young talent since Phillips
Unfortunately, the 29-year-old has experienced a lot of pain since exiting Elland Road, with only 31 first-team appearances coming his way at the Etihad to date, on top of other unmemorable loan moves just not working out, namely at West Ham and Ipswich Town.
So, who’s the next cab off the rank? Well, Harry Gray could well look up to Phillips and indeed his brother, Archie, when examining the potential for minutes at a first-team level.
Much like Redfearn before him with Phillips, Farke gifted the teenager his first ever senior clash in Leeds white at the end of the 2024/25 campaign, with his outrageous numbers in the youth set-up for some time now making this somewhat of an expected promotion.
Indeed, across just 18 appearances for both the U18s and U21s to date, the forward has bagged a deadly 11 strikes, living up to his billing as “one of England’s best prospects in his generation,” in the words of data analyst Ben Mattinson.
1. Tom Elliott
16 years, 2 months, 25 days
4
2. Aaron Lennon
16 years, 4 months, 7 days
43
3. Harry Gray
16 years, 6 months, 13 days
1
4. James Milner
16 years, ten months, 6 days
54
5. Neil Aspin
16 years, ten months, 8 days
38
It’s rather frightening how ahead Gray already looks with his development, considering it would take Phillips a number of seasons before he was fully settled into first-team life.
With the new Thorp Arch sensation, however, he looks ready to already make an impact to keep his blistering goal record at youth level up.
Nobody can accurately predict what the future holds for Gray, but if he can continue to learn and grow under the tutelage of Farke, he could one day be an even bigger sale than Phillips, and perhaps even solidify himself as more of a Premier League worthy talent than his counterpart ever managed.
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