I fully understand why O'Brien might be interested if Leeds wanted him and I certainly couldn't blame him if for wanting to go. But the club need to tread very carefully here otherwise they might well disillusion a lot of supporters. The fans are sick to the back teeth of seeing our best young talent leave the club. At the end of the day he's a contracted player and him and Gaskell are the only real gems in our side. In fact I'd say he's arguably held in higher esteem due to the fact he is a local lad and a product of our youth structure. The deal has to be a good one for us, 125k might be good for the books but if it weakens our team and pisses off a lot of support then it might well be much more costly in the long run.
We have a dedicated bunch of supporters working for Bullbuilder trying to encourage fans to dip into their pockets to help with the academy but if all they ever do is leave the club rather than build around them then why bother?