If Archie had signed a youth contract with Bradford and our DoF had persuaded him to join Leeds, then I'd have said yes he deserves credit. However whilst it is factually true that Orta was DoF when Archie signed professional terms I still think it's a stretch to give him credit for it. In the same way I don't hold him responsible for signing Vurnin Anita even though factually he did indeed sign him. To anyone who had looked at his performances the previous season at Newcastle, they would be a fool to turn down the chance to sign him on a free transfer. As it happened it wasn't very successful but I don't blame our DoF at the time for that failure, so I'm also not going to give him credit for offering professional terms to a highly talented young footballer who had been at the club as a youth player for the previous 8 years
If we can offload Meslier, Firpo, Struijk, James, Gnonto and Bamford (I know, I’m being silly now) in the next couple of weeks he’s left a veritable goldmine! On a slightly more serious note, I can say hand on heart, I would rather go through our trials and tribulations than be a Chelsea fan right now. Even if they win everything in sight next year, that is just a clown show and highlights the ridicule money brings to football these days.
The Orta question will always be open to debate. In his defence as devils advocate he put together alongside Bielsa the most forward thinking coaching regime and training facility at TA which quickly won Cat A status. The U23s won everything and won promotion to Prem2 Div1 and were miles ahead at the top of that league up a point where our first team suffered massive injuries and one stage 60% of the first team were out, so the U23s were drafted into the first team and first team bench. In effect they lost nearly the whole season and development. The 23s were relegated back to Div2 as it was mainly U18s and 16s. Many of those 23s suffered because of it. But it wasOrta that assembled everything
Orta is a complex and passionate guy, I have only a very small amount of ‘inside info’ on him which only confirms my external view of his pros and cons. Hey let he without sin and all that. His big win as emu says was Bielsa - and he personally gave up a lot of control of affairs to get Bielsa. He has some big wins and plenty of flops on the recruitment side… some of them big ones. So do most DOFs. I didn’t agree with his first year carpet bomb approach to academy recruitment at the expense of first team but recognise it was a difficult situation. For me his tenure on the whole has more in the minus than plus column but it’s fine margins between success and failure. As emu says, no other DOF has got us to the PL regardless of what part people believed he played. My view is that life is generally shades of grey but most have black and white thinking.
And really that is all I was getting at. To use your phrase “carpet bomb” criticism of the club is unwarranted. There has been good and bad under the previous and current regimes. We had a 90 point season last year but if you only followed Leeds on antisocial media you would think we are in free fall.
And the agents fees for finding them new clubs. Fans always conveniently forget those and yet every year when accounts are published there’s 7 or 8 million paid to agents
