Coventry City linked with transfer for Premier League striker who has been made available

Coventry City have been identified in a list of potential destinations for Leeds United striker Patrick Bamford, who has no future at the club after their promotion back to the Premier League.

The Sky Blues are aiming for the top flight themselves under Frank Lampard and have been active in the window already, bringing in full-backs Miguel Angel Brau and Kaine Kesler-Hayden and goalkeeper Carl Rushworth, but the prospect of adding another attacker is plausible.

Bamford, 31, has scored 69 goals in the Championship over the course of his career and has netted 60 goals in all competitions for Leeds since joining from Middlesbrough in 2018, but hasn’t hit double figures since 2020/21 when the Whites were in the Premier League.

The striker has been informed by Leeds boss Daniel Farke that he won’t be in his plans for the new campaign and has been invited to find a new club, or he’ll be spending his time training with the club’s under 21s.

“I had a really open and honest conversation with Patrick, which was important,” he told BBC Sport. “He knows how much I rate him as a player and I would have preferred a fit Patrick Bamford for the last two seasons, but he is a player who needs to be the main man.

“He needs an arm round the shoulder after some difficult seasons. I was not willing to tell him he was the main man at Premier League level. In the second day of pre-season, I got him into my office and told him he is not in my plans for the upcoming season.

“It would have been easy for me to hide behind the sporting director or wait until we got someone else in, but he has done so much for this club, he deserves respect and transparency. I will treat this situation as respectfully as possible, but there comes a moment when you can’t carry on with five or six strikers.

“Right now, we are talking about what we do to retain his fitness levels. The under-21s are going to Munich for a friendly but when they come back, he will probably join many sessions with them. He needs team training to stay fit. It would make no sense just to let him run around the lake [at the training ground].”

Team Talk reports that the Sky Blues, as well as Birmingham City, Sunderland and Bamford’s former clubs Middlesbrough and Burnley are all interested in the striker this summer as he weighs up his options and his next move.