Can't be sure (if I want any more)

This winter was a resolute sort of transfer window for Leeds United, who stuck stubbornly to some thrifty old adages. Like never going shopping on empty stomach, the better to resist the market's sweet temptations.

Make your list before you go, and go right to the right aisles for your needs. Have the right cash in your pocket, and nothing more, leaving the credit cards at home so you don't spend what you can't afford. And don't be gulled by bright marketing materials. The Joel Piroe at home is just as good as the expensive new branded strikers being advertised on the shelves.

Of course if you come home with an empty basket there's a risk you'll starve, but that takes us back to 2022/23, and Leeds United's last winter window in a relegation battle. Better to have starved, than agreed a £35m fee for Weston McKennie? That was on top of the £1.5m it cost just to borrow him. £36m went on Georginio Rutter, a bemused youngster who thought the Premier League was a sweetshop but was dropped, at Leeds, into an abattoir. Max Wöber, at £11m, was one of those purchases you convince yourself will come in useful, only to find him at the back of a cupboard years later, half-broken and covered in dust.

A football fan's great fear is of their club repeating sins of the past, but Leeds United are barely past repenting their last attempt at staying in the Premier League. It's all still there in the purgatory of the Profit & Sustainability Rules. The winters since have convinced Leeds United's owners that their newer path is the more virtuous. Connor Roberts came on loan in the first to cover at right-back, and that has been it, until this season and Facundo Buonanotte, loaned from Brighton, a deal Leeds had wanted to do in summer.