Leeds United are probably one of the country’s most transparent clubs when it comes to the inner workings of the backroom staff.
The ground-breaking Amazon Prime documentary allowed us to see behind the curtain at Elland Road, and great insight from journalists such as Phil Hay and Graham Smyth allows us to keep up to date with all the ongoings in Yorkshire.
However, despite being able to learn quite a lot about how the club operates, we’re still learning new things every week, and Victor Orta’s recent interview gave us another peek behind the scenes at Thorp Arch.
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Interestingly, the Director of Football confirmed that he works very closely with Marcelo Bielsa whenever he’s eyeing up a signing saying:
“It’s not only Bielsa, it’s every manager. If you don’t involve your manager in recruitment, you’re making a huge mistake. All my most successful signings were made in complete synergy with the head coach. You need to share all the information with him and to make him part of all the decisions that are taken.”
It’s interesting to see that Bielsa is involved in the process. There looked to be quite a disconnect between both parties this season with a number of signings Orta made being completely neglected by the manager.
Eddie Nketiah made just two starts after the Spaniard went to great lengths to sign him with a Dragon’s Den style presentation in the summer.
Jack Clarke played just 19 minutes before he was recalled in January, and the same fate has unfortunately been bestowed upon United’s winter arrivals. Ian Poveda still awaits his debut and Jean-Kevin Augustin has played only 49 minutes.
It seems that Bielsa needs to grow a bit of a backbone and make it abundantly clear to Orta who he does and doesn’t want at the club as he’s risking the team throwing money down the drain on players that simply aren’t going to get a chance.
Orta preaches that there is a complete synergy between him and Bielsa, but the team selection on a weekly basis directly contradicts that point of view.
Hopefully, the Argentine starts to veto more of these moves in the future and United won’t be wasting any more time or money on players the manager simply doesn’t want to use. As Leeds get ready for a potential season in the top-flight, this will be particularly important.
In other news, Leeds look to have acted too quickly with this player.