Exclusive: Where Lee Hendrie thinks Patrick Bamford could end up in the EFL Championship revealed | OneFootball

Patrick Bamford is without a club. Speaking exclusively to FLW, Sky Sports pundit Lee Hendrie feels he won't be short of offers from the Championship.

After seven years and over 200 appearances for Leeds United, striker Patrick Bamford is without a club following his release from Elland Road this summer.

The former England international has had a horrendous time with injuries, making just 17 Championship appearances for Leeds throughout the 2024-25 season, and, a few weeks after the Leeds manager Daniel Farke confirmed that Bamford wasn't part of his plans following their return to the Premier League, it was confirmed at the end of last month by Leeds that agreement had been reached to terminate his contract by mutual consent.

All of this leaves Bamford in something of a bind. At 31-years-old, time is starting to run out on his playing career, and without a club each week that he's not playing is costing him thousands of pounds. But while there have been rumours about where his next destination might be, nothing concrete has yet come up.

Lee Hendrie doesn't believe that Patrick Bamford will be short of options

Speaking exclusively to Football League World, Sky Sports pundit Lee Hendrie has explained that while Bamford's playing career has been knocked off course by injury, he should still find another club: "I think Patrick Bamford's still got a lot to offer. He hasn't played a lot of football down to injuries, not being fully fit, being in a strong squad where they've had lots of players in the position that he plays in, and now finds himself a free agent."

Hendrie feels that Bamford could fit in anywhere in the top half of the Championship, though these may not be the only offers that he's received: "I think it's hard to single out a football club that would tick all the boxes because there's plenty out there in the Championship, there's no doubt of that at all. It's whether Patrick Bamford thinks he could do better. Could he move abroad?"

The Sky Sports man understands that his wage demands could be a stumbling block for Bamford, but that offers should have come in regardless: "I'm sure he'll have had options he could look at and maybe turned away, but I think anything from the top half of the Championship, that be competing for the play-offs, why would you not take a punt on Patrick Bamford? Again, I suppose it would be wages, it would be stuff like that, but he's a free agent and I suppose it's down to him whether he wants to go and do so."

He doesn't feel that it's right to identify any one or two clubs who he could sign for, when his talents would come in useful at just about any Championship club: "But I don't think you can highlight one or two sides. I think anyone in the top end of the Championship, as in competing, I think why wouldn't you take a punt on him? I think it would be crazy not to."

Patrick Bamford has hinted at MLS move as he looks to find form

Privately educated and with four A-Levels under his belt, Patrick Bamford is cut from a different cloth to most other professional footballers. But over the course of a 15-year playing career, he's proved himself in both the Premier League and the Championship.

He's never been a great scorer of goals. He's only managed double-figures five times throughout his playing career. Furthermore, two of those five seasons came more than a decade ago, and the last time he managed this feat was five years ago, in the Premier League for Leeds United, when he scored 17 times in 38 League appearances for the Whites throughout the 2020-21 season.

But injuries have derailed his career since then. He made his England debut against Andorra at the start of the 2021-22 season, but every season since 2020-21 has been blighted for him by some form of injury or another. Last season, he could only manage 17 appearances for Leeds and failed to score, so Farke's decision not to keep him around wasn't much of a surprise.

Wages are certainly a potential issue, for clubs looking at potentially taking him on. Capology estimates that his Leeds wage was £70,000-a-week, and at 31-years-old and with his injury record, it's unlikely that he'd be able to demand that sort of money again. But a quarter of that amount would still be a handsome wages by most standards, and that sort of wage requirement would put him within the financial reach of many Championship clubs.

Playing abroad could work for him. He admitted at the start of the summer that he was open to playing in MLS in the United States of America, and offers could come in from elsewhere, as well. But the problem with MLS is that they run to a different calendar to this country. The MLS season runs from February to October, so it's unlikely that he'd be receiving many offers from America at this time of year.

In a couple of months, things could be different, but there are no guarantees of lucrative offers from the other side of the Atlantic, and sitting on the sidelines for several months wouldn't do his fitness any good while costing him a lot of money, in comparison with staying in England, where he could in theory be up, running, and ready to play by the end of the current international break.