Losing Robert Snodgrass to Norwich City cost Leeds United promotion to the Premier League last season, according to ex-manager Neil Warnock.
Snodgrass – who captained Leeds and scored 34 goals in 147 appearances for the club – left the Championship outfit to join Norwich for three million pounds in July 2012.
It was a shrewd piece of business by Norwich, with the Scottish winger one of his club’s best players last season, as he played every Premier League game bar one and scored six goals in the process.
That sort of form saw him called up to the Scotland international squad again and the 25-year-old bagged the winner for Gordon Strachan’s side in a 1-0 FIFA World Cup qualifier in Croatia last week.
Warnock, who resigned at Leeds in April after a series of poor results, believes he could have helped the three-time champions of England back into the top-flight if he was allowed to keep Snodgrass.
He told SportsDirect News: “Snodgrass was such a brilliant player. The club never replaced him directly.
“(Last season) we lost too many points in injury time and we lost Snodgrass when we shouldn’t have lost him.
“We got three million pounds for him and didn’t spend it. A lot of it was down to Snodgrass wanting to go so late in the window. I had to take him off the training ground so he could speak to Norwich.
“If he hadn’t have gone, I think we would have walked it (the Championship).”
