Four years, one relegation, one promotion and a great deal of argument later, the Gnonto Fiorentina move is done. Leeds United confirmed on Tuesday night that Wilfried Gnonto had left Elland Road for the Serie A side, the last significant name to walk out of a summer window that closed at 11pm with the Whites looking a good deal tidier than most of their rivals.
It is the sort of exit that will divide a fanbase for a while yet. Gnonto arrived in 2022 as a teenage Italy international with a highlight reel and a reputation, and he leaves as a squad player whose ceiling was argued over on the Kop for the best part of three seasons. Both of those things are true at once, which is why this one lands differently to the routine deadline-day housekeeping that went alongside it.
What Leeds have agreed on the Gnonto Fiorentina deal
Take the confirmed detail first. Leeds announced the departure in a club statement carried by the Yorkshire Evening Post, which also set out the total package price attached to the transfer. As the YEP reported on deadline day evening, Gnonto has joined Fiorentina on a season-long loan that carries a purchase option, rather than moving permanently in one step.
That structure matters more than the headline. A loan with an option means Leeds have not written him off and Fiorentina have not committed; the Italian club gets a season to decide whether a player raised in the Bundesliga and the Swiss top flight, then hardened in the Championship, can lead a line or hold a wing in Serie A. Leeds get his wages off the bill for a year and a price already agreed for next summer. If it works, the deal converts and the accounting is clean. If it does not, a winger with Premier League experience comes back into the building next July.
What it is not is a fire sale. Leeds spent the closing hours of the window making sure of that.
Why Gnonto’s exit only happened at the very last minute
The sequencing here is the story. Gnonto’s move to Florence was not something Leeds had banked in advance and then rubber-stamped. It was contingent, right up to the final hour, on Leeds finding a replacement.
The YEP’s live coverage of the day was explicit about it: the expectation among those close to the club was that Gnonto would be recalled from the prospective Fiorentina move unless a new wide forward arrived, and that his exit would only be sanctioned once one had. For most of Tuesday afternoon that looked unlikely. Attempts at other targets had already failed — the Mykhailo Mudryk pursuit had run out of road, with the YEP describing a Tottenham switch as a done deal on Monday — and there was no obvious plan C on the board.
Then, around teatime, a name nobody had connected to Leeds appeared. Within hours Leeds had agreed terms with Eintracht Frankfurt, and the Jean-Matteo Bahoya transfer was confirmed after the deadline by deal sheet. The domino fell, and Gnonto’s move was signed off with it.
So the club held the line it had set itself. It did not let a first-team forward go and then hope; it made the replacement a condition of the sale. Given the number of windows in which Leeds United have done precisely the opposite, that deserves noting.
The Leeds career, honestly assessed
Gnonto’s four years at Elland Road were a study in the gap between potential and output. He came in from FC Zürich in the summer of 2022, an 18-year-old who had already been capped by Italy, and there were nights early on when he looked like the best young player at the club by a distance — direct, fearless, capable of beating a full-back on either side and unbothered by whose reputation he was running at.
What he never quite settled was the question of what he was. Not quite a nine, not quite a winger who would put in the defensive shift a Premier League manager demands, not quite a ten. He scored important goals and produced individual moments that few in the squad could match, and he also went through long stretches where the end product dried up and the manager of the day picked somebody more predictable.
He stayed through relegation in 2023, which is more than several of his teammates chose to do, and he was part of the squad that won promotion back to the Premier League. Last season he had a top-flight campaign in a side that survived. And he was still in Daniel Farke’s thinking as recently as a fortnight ago — he had been named among the available options for the Brentford game at the end of August, having shaken off a doubt before the Carabao Cup trip to Nottingham Forest.
The truthful verdict is that Leeds are losing a player who had become a useful option rather than an essential one, and that a fair number of supporters will still feel the club never worked out how to get the best out of him. Both of those can be right.
What Farke is left with out wide
Here is the practical consequence, and it is not trivial. Leeds finished deadline day with two fewer senior wide forwards than they had at breakfast. Gnonto went to Fiorentina; Largie Ramazani joined Burnley on a loan that becomes permanent next summer. Only one arrived to replace them.
Run through the confirmed 2026/27 squad and Farke’s options in the wide areas come down to Daniel James, still the quickest way this team has of turning defence into attack; Harry Wilson, who offers craft, delivery and a left foot rather than a footrace; Noah Okafor, whom Leeds reportedly refused to discuss with Sunderland when an enquiry arrived on deadline day; Brenden Aaronson, whose best work is done in the half-spaces rather than on the touchline; and now Bahoya, who is quick enough to have set a Bundesliga speed record and raw enough that Farke will need time with him.
That is workable. It is not deep. One hamstring in October and Leeds are picking a midfielder on the wing, with no window open until January to fix it. The margin the club has left itself is the honest cost of letting Gnonto go.
The window in the round
Zoom out and the summer reads well. Seven players came in: Harry Wilson on a free from Fulham, Tarik Muharemović from Sassuolo, James Trafford from Manchester City, Nico Elvedi from Mönchengladbach, Ditmir Hodja from Rabotnicki, then Melvin Bard on loan from Nice with an option to buy, and finally Bahoya. The full ledger of arrivals and departures is set out in our guide to Leeds United’s 2026 summer transfers.
Going the other way, alongside Gnonto and Ramazani: Pascal Struijk to Brighton, Karl Darlow to Manchester United, Jack Harrison to New England Revolution, Joe Gelhardt to Hull City, Isaac Schmidt to Young Boys, Illan Meslier to Arsenal on a free when his contract expired, plus loans for Joël Piroe and Sebastiaan Bornauw. That is a squad genuinely reshaped rather than merely refreshed.
And it has been done from a position of relative calm. Leeds have four points from their first two Premier League games — Anton Stach’s free-kick winning it at Forest, then a 1-1 draw with Brentford at Elland Road in which Dominic Calvert-Lewin equalised after Kevin Schade’s opener. Add the 2-0 win at Forest in the EFL Cup second round and Farke’s side are unbeaten in three, with a third-round tie against Chelsea to come and a reshuffled September — the Crystal Palace home fixture has been moved because of the opposition’s European commitments.
The bottom line
Gnonto leaves with a promotion medal, a fair amount of goodwill and the nagging sense of a player who was never quite given, or never quite took, a settled role. Fiorentina get a season to find out whether Serie A suits him better than the Premier League did. Leeds get a year of clarity, an agreed price and one fewer selection headache.
Whether it proves smart business depends entirely on Bahoya. Replace a squad winger with a better squad winger and this is a good day’s work. Replace him with a project who needs until Christmas, and a thin attack looks thinner every time James pulls up. The window has shut on the argument either way.
