As January’s icy blasts snuff out the last of the festive cheer, you might hear the sound of a distant grumbling, growing louder by the minute. It’s transfer season, and we’re getting close to the business end. It’s traditional at this time of year to put Victor Orta’s credentials under the microscope, and ask ourselves just how good — or otherwise — have his signings been?

A year ago I attempted to answer that question, only to tumble down one of those internet rabbit holes, that dropped me into an article I hadn’t seen before. I’d like to link to it, but it seems to have been deleted, for reasons that will become apparent. It was one of those lists where you have to click through multiple pages and a blockade of adverts to find out what the number one item is, and it listed Orta’s greatest transfer flops in increasing order of badness. All the usual names were in there: Ekuban, Cibicki, Wiedwald, De Bock, Grot. Number two was Ouasim Bouy. Number one made me spit my drink out, because it was Mateusz Klich.

I checked the article’s date. It was written in summer 2018, the dying days of the Heckingbottom era. At the time Klich was in exile at FC Utrecht, after failing to impress in nine appearances for Leeds. That made a bit more sense. Klich’s story, as we know, had quite some distance left to run: 150+ appearances, more than twenty goals and a league title, which the player himself commemorated with a spray painted mural on a stadium wall. Yet there it was, preserved in pixels: evidence of a time when Mateusz Klich’s stock was so low that even Ouasim smegging Bouy was considered a better investment. For the author, those nine appearances had been enough to decide Klich was no good and never would be. His words have aged like milk.

In case this is starting to come across as one amateur writer pouring snark over another, that’s not my intention. I’m trying to make a wider point about the eagerness of some fans to write off new players who make a slow start to their career with Leeds. And, for balance, here are some words of my own which have dated equally badly. I don’t have the option of deleting them as they’re immortalised in print, in the TSB summer special of that same year.

“One year ago I wrote that the 2017/18 season would define how Stuart Dallas would be remembered” I declared, with the certainty of a six year old stating Santa exists. “On this evidence he probably won’t be”. I went on to describe him as “average in more than one position” and “a bit ‘meh'”.

In my defence, I’d based my observations on three years of watching Stuart Dallas play. I tend to avoid making snap judgements on players as they have a nasty habit of coming back to bite me on the arse. Three years seemed a reasonable sample size to conclude Dallas had reached his ceiling. Sometimes you have to hold your hands up and admit you were wrong.

Last week I saw a tweet from a season ticket holder branding Dan James the ‘worst signing in the club’s history’. This, as anyone with a memory longer than that of the average goldfish ought to be able to attest, is quite a claim. It’s a fairly bold one, too, based on just fifteen games, many of which have shoehorned James into a striking role that negates his best qualities, and with which he is visibly uncomfortable. But there we are, ladies and gents, Dan James: the worst signing in Leeds United’s history. A season ticket holder said it, so it must be true.

Junior Firpo’s had it tough as well. A bombscare display against Brighton had many fans missing Gjanni Alioski a lot more than they expected to. That’s fair enough; Firpo’s start was disappointing and at times he has looked like a red card waiting to happen. So what do we do now, write him off as another failed experiment? There are clubs who can afford to chuck a £13m left back on the scrapheap after ten injury and Covid-interrupted games, but Leeds United isn’t one of them. Listen to Manchester United fans scream that their new £80m winger is broken and needs replacing with a better one, and ask yourself if this is a path we ought to be going down.

Is there a single player in this squad whose full potential was apparent after ten games? Klich’s first nine had him shipped back to Holland. Be honest, did you imagine Stuart Dallas would become anything more than an okay-ish Championship winger, or Patrick Bamford would one day join Kalvin Phillips in the England squad, or that League One Liam Cooper would be the one to lead us back to the Premier League? Anyone saying ten games was enough for them to predict these players would thrive in the Premier League is either a liar or a valid candidate to replace Bielsa. You shouldn’t be wasting your life on Twitter, you should be updating your CV, priming it for presentation to Angus Kinnear the minute Marcelo walks away.

Bielsa makes players better. It’s what makes him a coach first and foremost and a manager second. He was the catalyst that turned Klich into the Terminator and Dallas into the T-1000. He made the Yorkshire Pirlo so good the actual Pirlo sat up and took notice, and he made Premier League defences terrified of facing Patrick Bamford. Alchemy doesn’t even begin to describe what Bielsa has done to this squad. Surely it’s not asking too much for him to turn Junior Firpo back into the player Barcelona once saw as Jordi Alba’s successor.

It’s possible Firpo might not work out. Big club pedigree doesn’t guarantee success — look at Kiko Casilla. Firpo could still prove to be a more expensive Laurens De Bock, but he needs a fair chance before we stick that label on him. Even De Bock, the most maligned left-back in our recent history, got a fair crack from Bielsa, who watched all of his games from 2017/18, then watched him train, then finally tried him at centre-back in a pre-season friendly at York before concluding he couldn’t use him. Bielsa does not make snap judgements, nor is he swayed by the wisdom of crowds. He analyses, builds his own rationale, and owns his mistakes. Where others see problems, he sees possibilities.

It can be hard to let go of first impressions, so fair play to anyone big enough to hold their hands up after Firpo’s man of the match display against Burnley and give him the praise he deserved. First impressions are only helpful if you’re willing to move past them; those who cling to them, wanting to see their initial hunch justified, sometimes struggle to accept new evidence.

This is why I’m still on the fence about Victor Orta, and why the article I began to write a year ago remains unfinished. Some of the worst perceptions of Orta date back to his first transfer window when, like King Midas’s idiot brother, everything he touched turned to shit. My view of him in summer 2018 was fairly unfavourable, although it is fair to mention that, amidst the dross of that first scattergun window, he did unearth two slow-burner gems in Klich and Alioski, their value more obvious now than it was at the time.

Now, my own position is largely agnostic. Orta has had some unqualified successes and made some inexcusable mistakes. A few players (Samu Saiz, Tyler Roberts, Helder Costa) could be framed as either successes or failures. Some players, notably Jamal Blackman, failed for reasons outside Orta’s control. A couple (Caleb Ekuban, Yosuke Ideguchi) weren’t much good but were somehow sold on for a sizable profit. For many of Orta’s younger signings it’s simply too early to judge, but his low-risk high-reward youth policy is bearing fruit, and one Pascal Struijk or Joe Gelhardt fully cancels out the failure of twenty Alex Machucas, at least in financial terms.

So how good is Orta, really? Four years on from his appointment I’m still struggling to answer. But that’s okay, I’ll reserve judgement and save it for another article, sometime in the distant future, when we’re all finally able to look back at the Jean-Kevin Augustin saga and laugh.

Unless, of course, we haven’t signed a midfielder by January 31st, in which case I’ll be heading down to Elland Road with a pitchfork and a flaming torch. And even if we do sign one, I wonder if they’ll get more than nine games to prove themselves. ⬢