Rumour Mongering: James Milner Set to Return to Leeds United

If Leeds can earn promotion, Milner is said to want to return to his boyhood club to cap off his career.

Last season, Wolves and Fulham ran away at the top the Championship, setting out early markers as to their quality and with their eventual promotions to the Premier League never really in doubt. This season, there are early hints that Leeds United could do similar.

Marcelo Bielsa has Leeds playing a hard-driving, aggressive brand of football that has them top of the table after two months, making them early favourites for promotion. And if they can in fact achieve that, the rumour mongers say James Milner wants to head home.

Milner grew up in a family that supported Leeds before he joined their academy and, eventually, broke through into their first team. Now 32, he shows no signs of slowing down but the reality is that he’s far closer to the end of his career than to the beginning of it.

Returning to Leeds next summer to help keep them up in the Premier League—assuming they make it back to England’s top flight—would be an easy move to understand, even if Milner looks like he might still have a good season or two of top quality football in him.

It’s also worth nothing that, as things stand, Milner’s Liverpool contract expires next summer. Of course, it could all come to nothing. Leeds might tire and fall back—something Bielsa sides have historically been prone to—and Milner could sign a new Liverpool deal.

Still, if Leeds do get promoted—and perhaps too if Milner plays a key role in helping Liverpool to win major silverware this season to put a bow on his time with the Reds—it could well be that the veteran midfielder would seek to go home next summer.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com