Leeds United’s recruitment team could have a lot of work on this summer.

The Whites are back in the Premier League, and if they want to be competitive in the top-flight they’ll have to upgrade their squad as it is still largely filled with the same players that led United to a 13th placed Championship finish before the arrival of Marcelo Bielsa.

One area that desperately needs bolstering is at centre-half.

Ben White’s loan is up at the end of the season, while Gaetano Berardi looks set to leave on a free, meaning Liam Cooper could soon be the only senior centre back on the books.

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Luckily, United seem to already have a contingency plan, with Football Insider reporting that the club are looking at Branimir Kalaica due to his excellent data metrics.

While Kalaica may turn out to be a good player, Leeds must be careful not to get carried away with their stats-led model, because it’s already been shown that an over-reliance on stats when conducting transfer business can land you in trouble.

Fulham’s Premier League plight could well be the best example of this.

Players such as Jean-Michael Seri, Andre Franck Zambo Anguissa and Maxime Le Marchand were brought in by Tony Khan, who has always been a big backer of using moneyball-type analytics when making signings, and by the end of the season, not only were Fulham relegated while spending £100m, but the aforementioned players were voted amongst the worst signings of the campaign.

The problem is that stats in football aren’t the same as in other sports.

The moneyball system works in baseball and to an extent American football because they’re very play-by-play sports with one goal, either gaining yardage or getting on a base, while in the beautiful game there is more than one way to skin a cat, and players can often be caught out when moving between leagues due to the different styles.

Brighton are another club who are rather reliant on data when making signings, and it hasn’t quite worked out for them either.

Alireza Jahanbaksh looked to be a real player before arriving in England, he’d just won the Eredivisie Golden Boot, and there were hopes that he’d add the same sort of firepower to Brighton.

Yet, two seasons later the Iranian has scored just two league goals, and perhaps the Seagulls would have seen that coming if they weren’t as reliant on their analytical models.

Data is a big part of modern football, and simply ignoring it isn’t the answer, but if you become too reliant on it, it can become a slippery slope with dangerous consequences, and that’s something Leeds can’t afford to do on their return to the top-flight.