OPINION
Maybe, just maybe, those destroying Victor Orta left, right and centre should lay off him for a while and consider the facts.
The Leeds United recruitment chief has been taking it in the neck from a section of supporters following the team’s alarming slide down the Championship table.
Criticism has centred on the 16 new signings made by United during the summer, with the director of football blamed for the difficulties many of those players have had in proving consistently effective for the first team over the last three months.
What Orta’s critics seem to be forgetting is that he was working with a relatively shoestring budget during the summer window and that he did not take on his recruitment role until the end of May.
Those are two inarguable facts of recent transfer life at Leeds.
Orta had little time to get his feet under the table, analyse the squad at his disposal, identify targets, negotiate salaries and transfer fees, as well as predict which of the 2016-17 squad might need to be replaced.
Up until the end of last season, the Spaniard had been working at a Premier League club – Middlesbrough – with a different budget and targets to those presumably he would be able to sign for Leeds.
Yes, there was a whirlwind of incoming and outgoing activity, but Orta critics appear to forget that just £13.5million was spent on new players during the summer.
That is a miniscule sum compared to Leeds’ promotion rivals. Garry Monk’s club Middlesbrough spent more than that on one striker, Britt Assombalonga.
Orta clearly made mistakes, and United are paying for the failure to adequately replace Kyle Bartley and Charlie Taylor.
But the recruitment chief should be cut some slack. He is worth his wages for Samuel Saiz deal alone.