Leeds United’s Archie Gray has quickly established himself as one of England’s most promising youngsters this season.
Gray, who had been in and around Leeds’ first team under the likes of Marcelo Bielsa and Jesse Marsch without making an appearance, has been key to the Whites’ success so far this season.
He only turned 18 earlier this week but is already apart of England’s U21s setup, and has also been name checked by Three Lions boss Gareth Southgate as a potential contingency for the senior team.
And while he is the best youngster Leeds have produced in years, he wasn’t even the one being spoken about the most at Thorp Arch up until his breakthrough this season, according to Phil Hay.
In fact, it was actually his brother Harry. Speaking on the latest episode of the Square Ball Podcast, Hay has shared a great story from their great uncle Eddie about when he went to watch Harry a few years ago, and why he was actually making more waves than Archie.
Hay shares brilliant Harry Gray story
He said: “Given what is going on with Harry [Gray] and what people are saying about him, and for years, you’d probably put good money on it [Archie and Harry playing together].
“Remember back when we were talking about them by name and used to say there were some kids doing really well in the academy, but they’re so young it’s not really appropriate to start bigging them up at this point.
“But it was really Harry rather than Archie, even though people thought Archie was excellent, it was Harry more than him making waves because of the number of goals he scored.
“I told you this before but I interviewed Eddie for the Istanbul feature we did back in 2020, and he told me he’d just been away watching his great nephew over the weekend and they’d been at Bolton or somewhere like that.
“I asked how he got on and he said he scored eight goals. I said eight goals? He said he does that every week and wasn’t even joking. There’s a really good prospect there.”
Gray claimed in an interview with the Guardian in December that it is his dream to play alongside his brother at Leeds at some point over the next few years.
Harry is currently 15, and so if he follows the same trajectory as Archie, it will not be too long at all until he will be pushing for a place in Leeds’ first team.
That said, Harry has already been attracting interest from the likes of Manchester City, but hopefully Leeds can keep hold of him, with one of his former teammates Finley Gorman already having made that same move.