I loved Carbone too. Wasn't he only with us for half a season? Given the love he received from our fans it left a sour taste when he chose to leave us for Bradford City. Clearly, playing for a big club and being adored by the supporters wasn't as important to him as playing in Bradford for a bit of extra money.
From looking at free library it seems Gregory was still expecting him back as late as mid July 2000 but think we were offering about 25k and Bradford came straight in with 40k. They ended up in administration 18 months later.
Just love Carbone for that Leeds cup game which is one of my all time favourite home games and kicked us on for an exciting second half of the season that year.
If he'd stayed we'd surely never have signed Ginola and he'd have combined well with Angel coming in so it was pretty costly to be miserly and not up the contract offer considering he was already part of the group but Ellis....