We thought we’d heard the last of the Jean-Kevin Augustin saga when we were forced to pay £15.5m to his former club RB Leipzig, but we hadn’t. It now appears that we will have to shell out another £24.5m in wages to the man himself.

David Ornstein of the Athletic has revealed that FIFA’s Dispute Resolution Chamber have ruled that Leeds must pay Augustin in full for the €90,000 per week contract that we agreed with the player, which was to run for five years. Naturally Leeds have appealed against this decision, but would only tell The Athletic “The club cannot comment on an ongoing legal matter.”

The sorry saga began when Augustin joined Leeds on loan from RB Leipzig at the end of the January transfer window in 2020, with an obligation to sign the player permanently if we got promoted at the end of the season. At the time he was viewed as a hot prospect, and we even beat off competition from Manchester United to get his signature.

He had scored 20 goals in almost 100 first-team appearances for Paris Saint-Germain G and Leipzig from 2015 to 2019, and in the summer of 2016 he was the leading scorer in the European Under-19 Championship as part of the French side that won the title. Marcelo Bielsa approved the transfer personally and said that in peak form, Augustin would be worth up to £40m.

But unfortunately he never reached anything close to top form during his time at Leeds. He sounded very enthusiastic when he spoke to the club’s official website, but it soon became apparent that he was remarkably unfit when he arrived in Leeds. And of course he was then pushed too hard as he went straight in Bielsa’s training sessions, soon pulling up with a hamstring injury.

He was back in training before the 2019/20 season re-started after the enforced Covid break, and had got into better shape than before, only for the hamstring strain to reoccur, so he made no further contribution to the season. And by then Leeds had decided that we didn’t want to go through with the permanent transfer, with Jermaine Beckford claiming that multiple sources had told him that Augustin wouldn’t follow instructions in training.

We tried to get out of the deal on a technicality, arguing that the loan deal had expired at the end of June and we hadn’t been promoted by then, due to the enforced break caused by the pandemic. But that didn’t wash, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport eventually ruled that we would have to pay Leipzig £15.5m of the £18m they originally claimed.

So it’s probably doubtful that Leeds can use the same argument to get out of paying Augustin the wages we originally committed to, which might only be reduced by the amount that he is been able to earn elsewhere during the period that his original contract is in force. And his earnings elsewhere aren’t likely to be that great, given the way things have gone for him since.

After being released by both Leeds and RB Leipzig he went to Nantes as a free agent, but would score no goals in his 14 games for the club after suffering the effects of Long Covid. The 25 year-old is now trying to get his career back on track at Swiss club Basel, but according to the Transfermarkt website his current value is down to a mere €1.30m.

So he will go down as one of the most expensive flops in Leeds United’s history, and we’ve certainly had a few over the years. He made three substitute appearances for the first team, amounting to 48 minutes in total, scoring no goals in the process. In other words, his transfer fee and wages combined will end up costing us £833,333 for every unproductive minute he spent on the pitch.

It’s not been reported that there was any mention of this latest case in the club’s annual accounts that were published last week, but given that the club would have been well aware the case was pending there should perhaps have been a provision for the potential liability in the balance sheet, or it should have covered in the report that accompanied the accounts.

There is also the question of how much this will affect the budget for incoming transfers we try to reshape the squad over the summer, but no doubt we will find out in due course.

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